Too much, too soon after return of games led to surge in injuries

THE flood of ‘catastrophic’ injuries suffered by footballers, hurlers and camogie players when Gaelic games returned to play last year should be managed better this time around, according to former Team Ireland Olympic physio Marty Loughran. Based in Cookstown, Co Tyrone, with his company The Performance Lab, Loughran had warned of a potential epidemic of injuries before competitive games resumed last year. He cited evidence gleaned from the first few weeks following the return of the Bundesliga soccer league in Germany.

The company was in a knowledgeable position, then, as players from clubs in Derry and Tyrone sought treatment for a range of injuries when action resumed. However, the findings were still astonishing.

“It all depends on how your county arranges fixtures whenever they return,” stated Loughran. “If you are rushed back into double-fixture weekends or a massive amount of games in those first few weeks, you are going to be more at risk.

“If you take a county like Derry – they had fewer games spread out over more time – you are going to have a better chance of coming through it.

“We definitely saw that the Tyrone clubs had more injuries than the Derry clubs, because of the urgency of the quick turnaround of Tyrone compared to Derry. Tyrone squeezed a league in and Derry didn’t.”

The formats the two counties used were markedly different. Tyrone pressed ahead with a league, which meant at least one game per week with no gaps. Derry went for no league but a championship that featured group stages that would eventually determine seedings for the quarter-final stages.

Loughran explained: “The knockout games in Derry didn’t come until much later on down the line, so the best teams could build. They used the maximum amount of time.

“They didn’t try to be championship-fit for the first game and give themselves a three- or four-week turnaround to get right up to peak performance. They knew it wasn’t possible.”

On one day alone, Loughran referred five people to the Belfast Knee Clinic after games resumed.

“We saw a massive spike in soft-tissue injuries over the first few weeks the clubs were back,” he said.

“We were seeing hamstring injuries — not major ones ... strains and small tears. Thankfully not too many catastrophic hamstring injuries.

“Then, when the matches started, we started seeing the cruciates and achilles ruptures. We found the greatest spike in those catastrophic injuries that we have ever seen in such a short space of time. One Friday, I sent five people for ACL referrals – some footballers and some camogie players. That was after the return to action.”

Another alarming trend was that the rate of injuries had something in common with new management teams.

“Managers who were new to a club or a team suffered the most. They didn’t know the players, so they tried to rush to have loads of friendlies before the league started, therefore reducing the preparation time further,” said Loughran. “And they had a spike in injuries. They might have felt they needed that schedule to get to know the players and the best team at their disposal.

“The (best-equipped) teams have been established for a number of years under management teams, strength-and-conditioning teams, physios that have been there longterm and they can plan it out.

“They knew they were going to get to the quarter-finals anyway, so they

‘I sent five people for ACL referrals – some footballers and some camogie players’

could take a gamble and do more of a slow build.”

Other factors are fascinating. While 5km and 10km runs became fashionable at the start of lockdown, they vastly differ from match conditions.

Loughran noted that players were not used to multiple direction runs, sudden changes in pace and especially slowing down, as required in Gaelic games.

“Because we had a gym as well as a clinic, some of the clubs we work for and work with, we do their physio and their strength and conditioning. We know what we programme with the strength and conditioning and we see what comes out the other end with injuries,” he said. “Players who are coming in from other clubs that we don’t do the strength and conditioning with, we ask how they spent the last six weeks of lockdown – what did they do for the first three weeks when they were back on the pitch. You could see where the gaps had been.

“It’s nobody’s fault. This time last year, what coach in Ireland was good at managing a return to play after a pandemic? It hadn’t happened in 100 years. Nobody had this experience, but it’s about using the experience.”