A topic of most interest to me is
Sport Law, and the role managers have to take to reduce risk. The most common
risk in sporting organisations is negligence claims (Thorpe et al. 2009).
Managers accept incidents are bound to happen but what measures can be put in
place to reduce these risks?
Firstly, risk management involves
actions that will reduce the risk of an incident happening (Thorpe et al. 2009).
A sport manager has a duty of care, to ensure the safety of its stakeholders.
These include players, officials and spectators. In a sporting organisation,
board members, management and volunteers should all be involved in every step
of the risk management process. The ability to identify, analyse and evaluate
risk is critical in terms of the effectiveness of the manager. A number of steps can be put in place to
minimise risk;
-
Design a risk elimination and reduction
plan
-
Implement the plan
-
Develop and implement a clear
communication strategy on risk management
-
Communicate strategies to all
appropriate levels of the club
-
Ensure the board addresses risk
management periodically as a meeting agenda item
-
Monitor and review strategies at least
annually and report to the board through a risk manager
-
Ensure the board as adopted and
implemented a risk management policy
-
NSW Government Sport & Recreation 2013
Actions that could help to
provide good risk management strategies can be seen from some of the decided
negligence cases. Negligence is a
defined tort with three elements:
1. The defendant must owe the
plaintiff a duty of care;
2. There must a breach of that
duty; and,
3. This breach must have caused
damage to the plaintiff.
Davis
In the case Langham vs. Connells Point 2005, a spectator was awarded $233 in
damages after tripping over a rope in car park while attending a soccer match.
The rope was the same colour as the dirt in the car park, therefore was hard to
see. It was noted the soccer club owed a duty of care to its spectators, thus
should have ensured the rope stood out, by using a different colour rope or
placing flags to avoid the hazard (Thorpe et al. 2009).
Moreover, failing to adequately
check the grounds was found to been something that should have been done to
reduce the chance of injury such as in the case Stains vs. Commonwealth 1991 and Bujnowicz vs. Trustees of the Roman Catholic Church 2005.
NSW Parliamentary Library Research 2002
Moreover, a highly developed plan is one
produced by the AFL under the community club program. The plan has adopted strategies
to identify, assess and put in measures to best minimise risk in AFL football
clubs across the country. Furthermore, the plan emphasis’s the importance of
all football clubs to abide by a constitution, and develop a code of conduct
that all stakeholders in the club are fully aware of and compliment with. The
risk Management plan is an excellent example produced by the AFL, and one that
can be modeled by both National and International sporting organisations. It
can accessed via the following link
AFL 2004
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