National-Team Injury and Guaranteed Salary: Recent Guidance from BAT

The national-team injury did not fall outside the guarantee

The contract contained a broad injury guarantee but did not specifically state what would happen if the player was injured while representing his national team.

The club argued that an injury suffered on national-team duty should be treated differently from an injury occurring while playing or training for the club. BAT did not accept that distinction.

The guarantee itself contained no exclusion for national-team activity. If the parties had intended injuries sustained with a national team to have different financial consequences, such an exception could have been included in the agreement. BAT was not prepared to introduce one where the contract did not contain it.

This is an important point for both clubs and players. A broadly drafted guarantee is not necessarily limited to injuries sustained while performing directly for the club simply because the contract does not mention national-team activity expressly.

Medical examination provisions could not be used to reopen the contract every season

The club also relied on the contractual medical examination requirement. Its position was that the player effectively had to satisfy the medical requirements again before the following season. Because the injury prevented him from doing so, the club argued that the contract could no longer operate in the ordinary way and that no salary was payable.

BAT rejected that interpretation. The medical examination provision related to the commencement of the contractual relationship. Nothing in the contract established a recurring annual medical examination as a new condition for the continuation of the agreement.

That distinction was particularly important because the contract had been concluded for several seasons and was fully guaranteed. Treating the medical clause as an annual condition would have allowed the club effectively to reconsider the guarantee at the beginning of every season whenever the player was injured.

If a club intends a player to pass a fresh medical examination before every season, and particularly if failure to pass that examination is intended to affect salary or the continuation of the contract, that consequence should be clearly stated.

Non-registration did not extinguish the salary obligation

The club further argued that the player could not be registered and therefore could not participate in official competition. BAT again distinguished between two different matters.

A player may be unable to satisfy the requirements necessary to compete, but that does not automatically mean that his contractual right to remuneration disappears. In this case, the contract did not make payment of the guaranteed salary conditional upon the player being registered. The fact that the player did not participate in official games during the season therefore did not, by itself, release the club from its payment obligation.

This is particularly relevant in guaranteed contracts.

The absence of playing services did not defeat a fully guaranteed salary

The club also emphasised that it had received little or no sporting benefit from the player during the relevant season.

Commercially, the argument is understandable. A club pays a player in return for sporting services, and a long-term injury can leave it paying for a player who cannot compete while simultaneously having to secure a replacement. But this is precisely why the nature of the guarantee matters.

BAT did not treat the player's inability to participate in official games as sufficient to remove his entitlement to remuneration. The parties had agreed a fully guaranteed multi-year contract, including protection against injury. The player's entitlement therefore did not depend simply on the number of games played or the sporting value actually received by the club during a particular season.

A different contract could produce a different result. But where remuneration is intended to cease or be reduced because the player cannot provide sporting services, the agreement needs to establish that consequence.

Insurance prevented double recovery, but did not replace the club’s contractual obligation

The player had also received compensation from his national federation and an insurer as a result of the injury. The club argued that those payments should exclude any further obligation on its part.

The player, however, did not seek to recover both the full contractual salary and the third-party compensation. All amounts already received were credited, and the claim was limited to the remaining contractual shortfall. BAT accepted that approach.

The case therefore illustrates an important distinction. Third-party compensation may affect how much remains payable, but it does not necessarily determine whether the club is contractually liable in the first place.

Insurance should not automatically be treated as a substitute for the club's obligations under the employment contract. Its effect will depend on the contractual wording and on the insurance arrangement itself.

BAT did not use ex aequo et bono to rewrite the contract

There was also a broader fairness argument. The club held that it had lost an important player through an injury suffered outside club competition, had received no meaningful sporting contribution from him during the relevant season and had to deal with the sporting and financial consequences of his absence.

Because BAT decides cases ex aequo et bono, such considerations were potentially relevant. They did not, however, override the contractual allocation of risk. BAT accepted the position that the player had not chosen to become injured, while the club had agreed to a fully guaranteed contract without excluding national-team injuries or making salary conditional upon registration, annual medical clearance or actual participation.

The fact that the agreed allocation of risk ultimately proved financially disadvantageous to the club was not sufficient to change the bargain after the event.

Why the case matters

The award does not mean that a club must always pay full salary whenever a player is injured while representing a national team.

Its significance is more precise. Where a contract is fully guaranteed and protects the player against injury without excluding national-team activity, BAT may be unwilling to introduce such an exception merely because the injury occurred while the player was representing his country. Similarly, medical examination requirements, non-registration and inability to play will not necessarily override the guarantee unless the contract gives them that effect.

For clubs, the lesson is to define expressly what happens if a player is injured on national-team duty, whether medical examinations recur during a multi-year contract, whether registration is a condition of salary entitlement and how insurance payments interact with remuneration.

For players and agents, the case demonstrates why the substance of a guarantee matters more than its label. A contract described as “fully guaranteed” should be checked against the medical, registration, injury and insurance provisions elsewhere in the agreement.

The broader contractual lesson is straightforward: if injury, medical clearance, registration status or insurance is intended to limit guaranteed remuneration, that limitation should be agreed when the contract is drafted — not constructed after the risk has materialised.