The Eastern Pennsylvania Rugby Society Executive Board (EPRRS) would like to present several updates from our last communication in October. As there are many moving parts and unknowns that remain, there is a lot of information here. We’ve attempted to organize it in the most useful way possible. We strongly encourage everyone to read all of this. The information should factor heavily into your future decision making and will likely take up a large portion of discussion at our first meeting of the Spring.

Executive Summary:

There is no rugby officially being sanctioned at the moment. However, we are removing our request to not register with USA Rugby (USAR). To be clear: for those who wish to CIPP, the option is now available. The balance of this document will present the details as we know them and will provide background on our initial request.

Please understand that any match that is not assigned by EPRRS and has non-USAR members involved voids CIPP protections (including liability insurance), so keep that in mind if a club offers to hire you directly to ref an event. Depending on the event and clubs involved, you still may have liability insurance; just not through USA Rugby.

The EPRRS will maintain its stance of not assigning referees to matches. While there is currently no projection for when we will resume, we will alert you as the current restrictions are lifted. Those restrictions are:

1.) Pandemic-related return-to-play guidelines: Currently, both the Eastern Pennsylvania Rugby Union (EPRU) and the Pennsylvania State Based Rugby Organization (RugbyPA) are both at Level 3 in their guidelines, which allows for non-contact training sessions for clubs who choose to hold any organized team activity. We have seen no public announcements from Delaware or New Jersey. National Collegiate Rugby (NCR) is a national group so they are leaving this decision to the local areas – each NCRO affiliated league will need to clear their clubs. We will continue to update you on progress toward reaching Level 5, which would allow for normal rugby activities to resume. You would want to think before refereeing a match prior to Level 5 being reached for the competition.

2.) Governance disputes: USAR has acknowledged and already agreed to several of the combined referee societies’ demands as part of USAR’s post-bankruptcy reorganization (more on that below). We are satisfied with the current trajectory of response. However, the dispute between USAR and NCR - the governing body that oversees nearly all of the colleges in our region – continues. As USAR and NCR have not come to an agreement of membership or sanctioning, there are impacts to liability coverage and opportunities to sanctions from USAR. In cases where we would potentially assign referees to matches that include an NCR club, the CIPP coverage of the EPRRS would not be in effect, opening up a number of adverse situations. For these reasons, we are attempting to remain neutral until the dispute is resolved. What that means for refs will be communicated if and when it becomes necessary. EPRU understands the issues and remains supportive of our position, should it become necessary, to not supply referees in certain scenarios.

Background:

We, as the EPRRS Board, decided that we would continue to not assign referees to any matches in the Fall of 2020. This was due to several reasons at both a local and national level, including USAR's Return to Play Covid-19 guidelines, alongside state-specific social-gathering guidelines and restrictions.

In addition, we had asked that you hold off from registering with USAR. This ask was specific to grievances we had observed and provided to USAR in line with every other ref society in the country due to decisions made in the reorganization effort of our governing body without a representative to serve on behalf of referees.

In short, these grievances were specific to costs to register for USAR membership: every registration type except for referees received a discount. As an added concern, members who served multiple roles for a club (such as referee & coach or referee & player) were doubly penalized because there was no discount provided for this scenario, either. As a national collective of ref societies, we saw no benefit to allowing member dues flow into USAR without a dialogue on the future of referees and a guarantee of representation in future decisions pertaining to referees.

There is also the matter of NCR, which has grown from what most of us remember as the National Small College Organization (NSCRO). In the past, NSCRO and USAR operated with USAR sanctioning and with a memorandum of understanding that NSCRO members were members of USAR. The emergence of NCR from NSCRO has shifted the conversation as NCR is attempting to operate as a separate governing body from USAR. While this mainly affects college rugby athletes and programs, it also has secondary impact to referees across the country. As USAR and NCR have not come to an agreement of membership or sanctioning, it raises issues with third-party liability coverage as well as possible punitive USAR sanctioning to individuals who work with NCR, including referees. Referees will be covered by CIPP for matches between USAR teams. Referees will have similar coverage for events and matches between NCR teams. There will be no such coverage in events or matches with USAR and NCR clubs together. We as a society - along with our friends in Potomac and Virginia - are disproportionately affected by this change compared to other regions in the country. The majority of the college programs we would traditionally assign referees to were NSCRO programs that have stayed on with NCR. There was also a cohort of clubs which moved from USAR to NCR since the announcement of USAR’s bankruptcy. As it stands, less than five college sides in our region would be registered with USAR.

The main issue for us as referees is what would traditionally be covered by the CIPP benefits that came along with our USAR membership. In cases where we would potentially assign referees to matches that include an NCR club, our CIPP coverage would not be in effect, potentially leaving our members vulnerable without third-party liability protections.

Next comes the issue of potential USAR sanctions. Unfortunately, referees have been placed squarely in the middle of the issue between USAR and NCR. Clubs under NCR are not currently recognized as USAR members, which leads to coverage issues where we would be asked to assign our members to matches involving NCR clubs.

At a time when USAR is struggling to ensure that it pays its financial obligations as part of the bankruptcy proceedings, they are not going to allow an independent organization to take away a large source of member dues, which is resembling - from our perspective - a nasty divorce. USAR has also been aggressive in letting us know that any referee who engages in matches outside of USAR’s scope is liable to receive some form of punishment. The details of any potential punishment have been vague; however, we are watching several cases in different regions to understand what the outcomes might be. NCR has been courting our services, but they are not currently structured to provide any support to referees outside of game-day responsibilities. The thought of many around the country is that USAR would be unwise to sanction individual referees. The most would be relieving them of national assignments which will be of high interest to some individual referees. The Referee Society, though, might not be as lucky and it is the chief reason we will not be assigning right now.

Summary of Where are we Now:

USA RUGBY

Since communicating our grievances and threatening to withhold our membership’s dues, USAR rugby took the following actions:

Assigned a USAR board member to represent referees
1. This is not a referee seat or vote on the board, but a member of the board to represent us as well as several other constituent membership groups
Agreement to reconvene the Rules and Laws Committee with newly elected officers and members
1. This committee originally operated as a group independent of USAR, with the purpose of advocating for the needs and concerns of local societies as well as the USAR themselves
2. Nominations for officers have been solicited and the new committee is expected to be elected shortly
While the dues structure is currently locked into a 2-year agreement as part of USAR’s reorganization, a portion of every referee registration will be provided directly back to referees
1. This will allow us to being building budget that will benefit USAR referees in the future

This is not the end of the conversation about keeping USAR accountable to our needs. As mentioned above, we are expecting the new Rules and Laws committee to be seated. The nominated members are expected to be elected and fill their seats within the next two weeks, where they will begin working between societies like ours and USAR. Leaders from each society are continuing to meet and discuss the future of our societies as the landscape for rugby in the U.S. remains fluid.

Dispute between USA Rugby and National College Rugby

Next Steps:

We are no longer asking that you do not register with USAR - if you choose to do so, the option is open to you.

We will not assign any matches or events until we feel the dispute has reached a level of resolution to keep us safe.

EPRRS Moving Forward

We, the executive board, will be putting society meetings back onto the calendar.

We will communicate as we hear organizations move to Level 5.

If you have any questions around what has been presented in this email, please feel free to reach out. We are happy to answer any questions you may have.

Request an EPRRS Referee