What should travel with a player between teams

I have handed players over, and received them, in national, county, state and franchise teams. The gaps are rarely about clinical skill. They are about ownership and timing: who has the current plan, and who decides the next step.

Where handovers go wrong

• The plan lives in one person's head, or in one team's system that nobody else opens.
• The new team gets a diagnosis but not the current stage: what the player is doing this week.
• Nobody knows who decides. The franchise physio, the national team doctor and a private physio each assume someone else is leading.
• Loads reset. A bowler arrives from a heavy block and is rested too long, or arrives from a break and is asked for long spells.
• The player is the only link, and has been told three slightly different things.

What a useful handover contains

One page, dated, in plain words:

• The problem, and the date it started.
• Where things are up to: the current stage, and this week's bowling, running and gym.
• What has been done, including anything that did not help.
• The next step, and what has to be true before it.
• Scan and report dates, and who holds the originals.
• Who is responsible now, and how to reach them.
• What the player has agreed to share, and with whom.

Send it before the player arrives, not after the first session.

Who owns which decision

• The player decides who sees their health information.
• The treating team makes the clinical decisions while the player is with them.
• The receiving team takes over those decisions when the player arrives.
• Where a player has a coordinator, that person keeps the plan current between teams and follows up. They do not override the treating team.

Write this down once, at the start of a contract or a tour. It saves the argument later.

What an agent or manager should receive

Agents need enough to plan, not clinical records. A useful summary is short, dated and shared with the player's consent:

• Available, modified or unavailable, and from when.
• The next review date.
• Anything that affects travel, contracts or scheduling, in plain words.

Anything beyond that goes through the player, with their consent each time.

Five questions before a move

1. Who has the current plan, and is it written down?
2. What is the player doing this week, in numbers?
3. Who decides the next step, here and at the new team?
4. What has the player agreed to share, and with whom?
5. When is the next review, and who is doing it?

For players

Keep your own copy of the one-page plan and your scan reports. You are the only person who goes to every team.

Where I fit

For a professional player, or an agent who looks after players, I am open to a conversation about an agreed coordination role. It sits alongside the team's own medical staff, not around them. Scope is agreed after that first discussion.

Player care

Further reading