RLWC2021: How injuries affect players in the men’s and women’s games
As the Rugby League World Cup stages the men’s, women’s and wheelchair tournaments together for the first time, Professor of Physiotherapy at Manchester Metropolitan University, Michael Callaghan talks about the impacts and injuries faced by players and why we are only starting to find out more about the women’s game.
Professor Callaghan is a former team physio for Wigan RLFC and an ex-amateur player himself. He is also the Director of Research and Development at Manchester United FC.
Injuries are one of the unpleasant side effects of all sports, and a crucial one to understand at elite level. When it comes to rugby injuries those encountered by players are a growing source of academic and professional interest.
There can be 3000 recorded impacts in a single game - that are not far off a 40mph car crash, at around 60,000 Newtons impact force, for each impact: the heavier the player, the greater the impact force. These are the big problems that rugby league players’ bodies must deal with.
The sport has now got a lot of information from new technology about the number of forces going through a player when they get hit. Most of these are from devices worn in the back - you often see them mounted in the back of a player’s jersey - but they also use mouthguards as well.
With some impacts you might get a rib or shoulder injury, which are not pleasant but people recover from that. The real problem is concussion - and that’s not just about being hit in the head. It’s also the whiplash effect of being hit by somebody in the chest, the neck gets rolled back and that’s one of the problems that can happen.
Women’s World Cup
While impacts and injury are well-documented in the more established men’s game, we’re playing catch up with the information for women players. However, researchers are starting to look at this more and more. It’s new territory and a novel area of research.
The Rugby League World Cup should provide a rich source of data from on-field technology worn by the players – certainly from those in the bigger, better-resourced teams like England, New Zealand and Australia.
What we know already is that women suffer more injuries and suffer more incidents with concussion than men – but we’re not yet sure why, and there’s still a lot of relatively new data coming out on this. If they play with the same rules and with the same equipment, it should be the same.
Rugby League Sevens often have higher concussion rates because there’s more contact and the players have the ball more often than in a full-size game where there are 13 men or women and the amount of impact is distributed more. So, we’re keen to understand this more so that we can help to prevent these serious injuries.
Beyond concussion, injuries are in generally sustained in the same areas for both men and women players, that is upper or lower limbs, but just a different distribution. For women it’s the knee, lower leg and calf and for male players it’s the thigh, calf and shoulder.
Both equally suffer contusions - or bruising - which are the most common type of injury because it’s a high impact game, and there are also muscle strains and ligament sprains. In wheelchair rugby, shoulder damage is the most common injury.
Impact
At such an elite level, injury can have a major impact on a team. Sometimes it’s a club versus country thing. The England men’s squad lost several players who were carrying injuries for the latter part of the domestic season and therefore couldn’t play in the World Cup. Jonny Lomax played the Super League Grand Final for St Helens against Leeds in September but can’t play in the international tournament due to a ruptured bicep.
Despite these setbacks, injury is all part of the game in what is one of the most physically demanding sports. Let’s hope the England men’s team continue their form and the women get off to a good start in their campaign this week with as little injury as possible.
