For additional context, I have been involved in rugby in the state of Florida for a bit over 10 years, mostly as a player and the last year and a half as an active ref, and I am not aware of any requirement for medical staff to be present at a game in our Union. Tournaments usually have some present but for regular season games it’s significantly less common and friendlies, forget about it.
Got to love how it varies from State to State, and when you have regional orgs…
Also, mea culpa - I may have overstretched the requirements.
Partly out of interest and also self-preservation I’ve just trawled around to find the current position for CT and also Massachusetts (as I sometimes get matches in that state). From what I can work out the medical staff is a hard and fast rule for all college, high schools and youth rugby (at least in CT though I expect MA is the same based on what I’ve seen) - rereading the regional regs it would seem we let players in the (non-college) adult teams decide for themselves.
The NERFU (New England) regs section 7 has a few lines on medical “guidelines “ that basically has:
- Recommend that the club has a plan
- Recommended the home team has an EMT or ATC (trainer) or other medically qualified individual to cover the match but…
- Schools must adhere to their own medical coverage policy (which is cover is mandatory)
- Any match or tournament involving college teams are required to have either an EMT or ATC.
- Host clubs are required to provide the visiting team with information (hard copy) on the directions and address to the nearest hospital.
Apologies for the confusion.
Quick aside - I found the stated requirement that “Host Clubs are responsible for providing suitable restroom facilities” a little amusing. For most of my matches the “restroom” is usually an utterly abused and overused public porta potty to the side of the cow pasture pitch. I’ve seen players and staff almost cross eyed in agony holding out for the bar later rather than use one of them midsummer…