December 2021 Newsletter

Dear all,

As we now enter a period of relative quiet we’d like to share our December roundup.

Rugby in January 2022

As it stands fixtures are scheduled to take place commencing January 8th and appointments for January have been made on this basis. As always, please accept appointments swiftly and keep your availability of Who’s the Ref up to date.

The management group will obviously be keeping an eye on the situation and have already scheduled a call in for the first week of January to discuss any communications from RFU and/or government to emerge over the festive period.

Next Society Meetings

All pencilled in to be hosted at Shelford RFC but liable to change depending on external situation.

Tuesday 11th January – Referee Development/Action Plans.

Using your assessment observations, and by discussing aspects of your refereeing performance, create or update your personal action plans. This meeting may end up occurring online.

Tuesday 1st February – Pre-match Preparation

Tuesday 1st March – Communication

Serious Injury Reporting

The management group have again been asked questions around the reporting of serious injuries and therefore would like to remind our referees of the following.

A serious injury report is required from the referee if one of the following two conditions are met (as per the RFU guidelines):

• An injury which results in the player being admitted to a hospital (this does not include those that attend an Accident or Emergency Department and are allowed home from there).
• Deaths which occur during or within six hours of a game finishing.

If a player requires an ambulance or leaves for hospital, we ask all referees to send a brief email to the society secretary outline details (not a full report at this stage).

If a referee is, at any point, contacted by any legal professional regarding any incident that takes place on a rugby pitch (or surrounding a rugby match), they must refer the person to the society secretary, who will in turn enagage the appropriate RFU teams. Referees who are appointed by the society are covered by the RFU insurance.

We also remind referees that clubs are responsible for medical cover on the pitch and that they are not the first line of cover in this regard. This does not, however, stop a referee from engaging in first aid activities if they are sufficiently qualified to do so.

Annual Dinner 2022

We are delighted to be able to open bookings for our 2022 dinner. The guest speaker will be Brian Moore. Further details on the website – https://cudrrs.org/about-us/annual-dinner-and-awards/(opens in a new tab)

And finally…

We’d once again like to thank Paul Wilson for organising the very popular 75th anniversary kit and new jackets. If you are yet to collect yours then please contact paul directly to arrange collection/postage.

Which leaves one last thing – on behalf of the management group, and society as a whole, we wish you, your family and friends a safe, healthy and restful festive period and a happy new year.