Falcons Doctors In Rugby World Cup Roles
As Rugby World Cup returns to Newcastle this weekend, there will be two more members of the Falcons Family involved at St James’ Park within the match day medical team.
Alongside her duties at Newcastle Falcons, the club’s Lead Doctor Rachel Scurfield is acting as Match Day Doctor for the Rugby World Cup matches played in Newcastle while Falcons Pitch-side Doctor Dean Shipsey is the Immediate Care Lead Doctor, in charge of a team of emergency medical professionals, for all three fixtures.
With ample experience of dealing with match day incidents and injuries, both are well placed to take on the roles in rugby’s biggest competition, although Scurfield explains there are differences to the pair’s usual domestic and European rugby roles.
“The Match Day Doctor role is a completely new role, created for the Rugby World Cup. It differs hugely from what we can do at club level because usually we only have the one broadcasting view of an incident. At the
Rugby World Cup we use advanced hawk-eye technology, which allows me to view 15 different angles, with the ability to zoom in or slow down an event so I have a huge advantage.”
“My main role is to adjudicate on the head bin, which is the ten minute head injury assessment you perform if there is a suspicion that one of the players may be concussed, and also on the blood bin, which is whether the player needs to be removed for stitches or whether the wound can be treated on the pitch, we’re very much there to assist the individual team doctors.”
Shipsey continues: “There’s a lot of cross over, what I’m doing will be to help the Team Doctor and act on their instruction as to how they want their player removed from the field of play, and then direct the team to help them do that. At the Falcons it’s our job to be that team that removes the player from the pitch, deciding how the player is removed and also directing the team too, so normally our team have to do everything.”
Alongside their busy roles at St James’ Park both doctors have taken on additional roles within the Rugby World Cup. Shipsey acted as Match Day Doctor for the two matches played at Leeds’ Elland Road Stadium while Scurfield is also acting as the Area Medical Officer for the All Blacks during their time in the North East, she explains:
“Whilst each team are in the region they need a liaison doctor who knows the local medical services well, can organise MRI scans, do the necessary prescriptions and make sure they’ve got access to everything they need.”
Across the country a number of other Aviva Premiership Doctors have taken on medical roles within the Rugby World Cup, as Scurfield explains:
“Throughout the Premiership we’ve experienced using the head injury assessment protocols. For some of the countries the Rugby World Cup will be the first time they’ve ever used those protocols so that will be interesting, even more so for the teams that don’t speak English. Every team has an interpreter so we have to perform a whole assessment in 10 minutes but potentially through an interpreter as well”
Speaking ahead of a weekend which will see up to four Falcons run out for their national teams at St James’ Park, Scurfield said: “I’m really looking forward to seeing our players as internationals, it’ll be great to see them performing in a World Class environment.”
