Pain, but no pay

THE Korumburra Bena Football Club has refused to pay the medical and out-of-pocket expenses of a junior footballer who cut his knee open on an exposed sprinkler head.

Tarwin Football Club under 18s player Kyle Robinson, 16, was playing on the muddy Korumburra ground on Saturday, August 11 this year, when he suffered a deep wound that cut him to the bone. The gash required five internal and five external stitches. It later became infected.

The game was abandoned, and later games were relocated to Stony Creek for the following day.

League insiders believe the ground was in no fit state to host a football match. It’s a claim that has been refuted by the Bulldogs. Further claims that an offer was made prior to the match to have the game relocated could not be confirmed.

Nine days after the incident, Kyle’s father Grant sent the Bulldogs a letter, listing his son’s medical and his out-of-pocket expenses (shifts lost working a part time job and boundary umpiring for the South Gippsland Umpires Association). The bill came to a little under $260.

He asked the club to pay the amount as a “goodwill gesture”.

The Bulldogs replied to the claim in a letter, saying: “…we believe our club has and did everything to ensure player safety, unfortunately in a physical sport injuries do occur.”

“We are glad Kyle’s injury is healing well and we don’t like to see any injuries but we believe that the club shouldn’t have to pay these costs and remuneration for lost shifts,” the letter said.

It’s a response that has angered both father and son.

“I thought they would offer to pay the money as it was their ground. And because it was a decent injury. I had medical expenses and lost work,” Kyle said.

“It wasn’t a standard injury for footy.”

Grant said he “did not want to pursue any legal avenues”.

“I just wanted to cover that money. It’s not because I want them to admit guilt. It was to be a goodwill gesture. From the start of it I really thought they would pay and when I got that letter it really disappointed me. To say they didn’t know the sprinklers were there was just rubbish,” he said.

“They knew they were there. They put them there.”

Bulldogs president Michael Hopkins said that if the club had agreed to the payment it would have opened “a big can of worms”.

“You’d pay one bloke for injuring himself on the footy field, then how many others are you going to pay? The ground had got seriously muddy, but there’s no way we could have predicted that the sprinkler head would surface,” he said.

“If he had landed six inches either way we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Alright, his kid was injured. But we couldn’t foresee that.”

Tarwin Football Club secretary Kieran O’Loughlin believes too much pressure is placed on club committee members to inspect grounds and give them the okay prior to matches.

“I don’t want to see something like Kyle’s injury happen again. The league really needs to make the call. Don’t leave it to the clubs to make the call,” he said.

“That’s where we stand as a club. We could have bashed on and done back flips and ranted and raved about the injury. But that wasn’t going to fix anything. What we really want to ensure is that something like this doesn’t happen again.

“We need a change of protocol, whether it starts from the VCFL (Victorian Country Football League) or the AFL (Alberton Football League).”

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Posted by Jacob De Kunder on Oct 9 2012. Filed under Featured, Sport. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry