Back to stories listingRosslyn Park National School Sevens
March 24th – 28th 2025
Return2Play
Howden Rosslyn Park National School Sevens is the largest school rugby tournament in the world hosting about 15,000 players and 3,000 staff and spectators across one week of sevens rugby. Return2Play provide medical cover for the entirety of the tournament with a team comprising of 40 doctors, nurses, physiotherapists, sports therapists, paramedics, and EMTs. Each day we have daily briefings with our medical lead to discuss the how the day will run and liaise with medical point leads to ensure communication remains efficient should extrication be required for any major traumas.
I had the privilege to be invited back for my third year with the R2P team. Many of the medical personnel rotate in and out of days due to availability, but a few of us are there every day, therefore we get allocated to a medical point each to be the lead of that point. I was allocated to Medical Point 1 which looks after 11 pitches. The doctor will be the medical point lead, but since we had a different doctor each day, it was my job to ensure that the personnel who were on the point knew where everything was, what to do and how we were to operate logistically.
At each medical point there is a doctor, physiotherapist/sports therapist, paramedic, and EMT minimum. Typically, it is a walk in wounded style of medical point because we cannot afford to have personnel leaving the tent. Logistically speaking, if we had to attend to any major injuries pitch side, the paramedic and I would take the ambulance and go to the casualty, leaving the doctor and EMT at the medical point. Essentially, we act as the hospital away from hospital, as to prevent overrunning the local A&E hospitals in the area; therefore we are equipped with a plethora of trauma kit to deal with anything that falls under the A-E assessment. We can: performance emergency tracheostomies; deal with catastrophic bleads; defibrillate; suture wounds; spinal board patients; secure fractures; relocate dislocations; and much more.
The vast majority of injuries we see are MSK traumas, ranging from low grade sprains and strains, to fractures and dislocations. In exceptionally rare cases, we may encounter respiratory traumas, although thankfully none this year. We are always kept busy, as my tent clocked about 250 injuries across the five days; and a tournament total of ~500. It’s always such a privilege to work with such an experienced team of people ranging from so many different areas of the medical world. I learn a lot from working with the team, and equally they learn a lot from what I have to offer.
As I’m currently studying my MSc in Physiotherapy (Pre-Reg) at UoG, I work this event under my BSc Sports Therapy scope of practice. It’s my BSc from the University of Worcester in Sports Therapy that equipped me with my MSK knowledge and my certificates in pre-hospital trauma management to provide the MSK expertise at RPNS7s; however, my continued (and advanced) learning from this MSc at the University of Gloucestershire has allowed me to increase my level of knowledge and hone my skills to work this event. I have had students shadowing me over the week ranging from undergraduate physiotherapists to 4th and 5th year medical students.
As always, it turns out to be a truly fantastic event that I look forward to every year!
Ben Ashworth
MSc (Pre-Reg) Physiotherapy [Student]
BSc (Hons) Sports Therapy
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