He joined the RFU formally last November but had already accompanied England on their summer tour to North America and Canada. “I had been through a very thorough selection process but the decision to leave Fulham Football Club and my general practice was quite a big one. Going on tour enabled Clive to look at me and for me to have a look at the set up,” he says.

Simon qualified as a doctor in 1986, having played rugby for St Paul’s School, Cambridge and St Mary’s Hospital, London. He trained as a general practitioner and then spent a year at the London Hospital, doing what was then the only full time post-graduate course in sports medicine, having always been “obsessed with sport”.

Two years later, to gain more experience he flew off to work full-time in a sports medicine clinic in Wellington, New Zealand. Having initially worked with the Wellington Colts team, when rugby went professional, he was appointed team doctor for the Wellington Hurricanes for the first season of the Super 12 competition.

His wife Trudi, a doctor in public health medicine, had the opportunity to work with an internationally renowned group researching into childhood asthma at the Wellington School of Medicine.

When the couple returned to the UK, Trudi became a Consultant in Public Health Medicine and Simon lectured in Sports Medicine for a year before becoming the Team Doctor to Fulham F.C. This involved working with Kevin Keegan and then Jean Tigana as Fulham climbed from second to first division and then into to the Premiership.

“Then this job came up at the RFU and it was the job I had always wanted, a fantastic opportunity to work at the highest level in the sport of my choice,” says Simon, who now has two sons, Theo, aged four and eight-year-old Sam, who has just started playing rugby at school in Wimbledon but does not have to perch on a milk crate on international match days. His grandfather while being delighted at Dr Kemp’s appointment “does shake his head slightly at the way things have gone since the advent of professionalism”, says Simon.

Head of Sports Medicine

The new role of Head of Sports Medicine within the RFU’s Performance Department involves the position of team physician for the Senior England side providing medical care during match weeks and on tour. It also means working with club medical teams to ensure that England players have rapid access to the most appropriate specialist opinions and the best injury prevention and rehabilitation programmes.

Said Dr Kemp; “We want to make sure that the sports medicine we are offering draws on experiences and excellence in other sports. We are leading the world in many aspects of our rugby programme and it is my brief to ensure we are world leading with respect to medicine. Clive Woodward’s vision for excellence in all areas surrounding the senior sides is all-important. This approach is more professional than I witnessed within Premiership football and it is a great time to have taken on this role.”

Another important aspect of the Head of Sports Medicine role is to develop the sports medicine care for the other England representative sides within the Performance Department: England A, U21s, U19s, 7s and Students.

“It is crucial to have world class sports medicine support across all the teams in the Performance Department and to develop the skills of all the doctors, physiotherapists and sports massage therapists,” said Dr Kemp. “We have some really world class practitioners, with a wide range of skills and we want to be able to develop that expertise to enhance the care offered to the representative sides and to use their experience in specific project work. We are starting to develop personal development plans and if they or we identify unmet educational needs we will endeavour to fill these either with programmes we put on or by funding attendance at specific courses.

“Elite players spent the majority of time with their clubs and working in partnership with club medical teams is a key part of my role. Establishing standardised clinical protocols in order to offer the best standard of care to all elite players with the Premiership clubs is an important medium term aim”.

In order to facilitate this process Dr Kemp is looking at the feasibility of a managed care scheme so that the medical costs for all Premiership players can be brought under a single scheme. “Everything we hope to do will be facilitated by a fully functioning England Rugby Ltd., where we are all player centred rather than following our own agendas.”

Newly commissioned injury research will also allow players’ careers to be managed in the safest way. The RFU and Leicester University are committed to a two-year injury and training audit within professional rugby.

“We hope that all 12 Zurich Premiership clubs will report player injuries and document their training practice for the 2002 / 03 and 2003 / 04 seasons using standardised questionnaires. There has not been a study like this in rugby before and we are piloting it currently with Saracens, Leicester Tigers and Northampton Saints. We will be recording exposure data (how many minutes each week they play and train and what activities training is actually made up of) which will enable us to properly look at what the risk factors for subsequent injury actually are. This is the first step to implementing evidenced-based injury prevention programmes”.

Working on this ground breaking injury database with Dr Kemp and National Fitness Advisor, Dave Reddin is a PhD student at Leicester - John Brooks, who just happens to also be prop for Bedford Blues and England Students.

“The focus of my work initially is very much with the senior side and the Premiership clubs and academies and via the other England medical teams with the other elite sides. My long term hope is that best practice will filter down into the community game but I need to be very realistic about the length of time and personnel needed if we are to address all the areas of rugby medicine throughout the game”.