Why women’s rugby needs its own injury prevention strategy

With the Women’s Six Nation’s Championship underway, there may be mounting public concern regarding the risk of injuries to players.

In recent years there was a major rise within the number of girls playing rugby. Women now make up one-quarter of the worldwide rugby playing population. But despite the indisputable fact that there are similar injuries in each men and girls’s rugby, female players need their very own injury prevention strategy.

There is evidence to suggest that gender differences may influence injuries in team sports typically.

Research shows that lower neck strength may predispose female rugby players to concussion. Research has shown that females have greater head acceleration in response to an applied force than males, which could predispose them to concussion. This could also be because females have significantly less isometric neck strength and neck girth.

Anatomical differences in the feminine pelvis, knee and lower leg can alter lower limb alignment. The resulting knee lightor “knock knee”, may increase injury risk to the knee particularly the medial collateral ligament, meniscus and possibly the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL).

Gender differences in neuromuscular function (the communication between the brain and muscles) have also been reported to contribute to ACL injury and possibly concussion.

While there are such differences, the common kinds of injuries in female and male rugby are similar. Concussion tops the list as essentially the most common specific injury diagnosis with lower leg injuries to the ankle, knee and hamstring following behind.

Higher risk?

Within rugby union, an injury is defined as any physical criticism sustained by a player in the course of the game that ends in the player being unable to participate in future rugby activities.

At the elite level, women’s rugby has an overall injury risk that is almost 50% lower than men’s rugby. This equates to about three injuries in every male skilled match, and lower than two injuries in every women’s rugby match.

In amateur rugby, the landscape is different. Both female and male players face a comparable risk of injuryalbeit a lower overall risk than on the skilled level.

Emerging evidence also suggests that the general burden of injury could also be higher in females than males at this level. Injury burden is a composite measure of injury incidence, or rate, and the times missed that’s utilized by experts to grasp the general impact of injuries.

Concussion and ACL injuries

Concussion is a light traumatic brain injury, often attributable to an impact to the top or body. The rate of concussion in men’s skilled rugby is greater than 30% higher than in women’s rugby. Research is proscribed on this topic, however it may very well be due to increased size and speed in male rugby increasing the force of contact to the body and due to this fact also to the top and neck.

However, gender differences in overall injury risk implies that concussion accounts for greater than one-third of all injuries for girls and lower than 1 / 4 of injuries for men.

Also notable is that female players face more adversarial consequences than men following concussionsresembling double the recovery time. The cause of concussion must also be considered. Whiplash and head to ground contact are substantial aspects in female players, and more so than in men. This is because of lower isometric neck strength meaning less control of the top during a tackle.

ACL injuries also plague elite women’s soccer. But in elite rugby, they’re 20 times higher for male skilled rugby players than their female counterparts.

Looking on the lower tiers of rugby, it becomes clear that ladies face a five times higher rate of ACL injuries in comparison with men. Similar to concussion, ACL injuries represent a greater injury burden for girls as compared to men with 50% longer recovery times.

Unanswered questions

Many questions remain to be answered on female rugby injury. For example, as women’s rugby transitions towards professionalism, how will this affect injury risk?

The lack of elite female teams has possibly contributed to women taking over the game at an older age than men. This may explain the emerging evidence of a link between poorer tackle technique and better injury risk in female players.

There are many other aspects we want to grasp higher too. For example, does the greater injury burden, often reported in women’s rugby, stem from a scarcity of adequate medical support for female teams? And is the menstrual cycle related to sports injury?

We also need to higher understand breast injuries. These injuries are prevalent in other sports resembling basketball, soccer, softball and volleyball. Nearly half of female athletes in such sports have reported they’ve sustained a breast injury. But there could be very limited research or established guidelines concerning breast protection and breast health in women’s rugby.

Despite these unanswered questions, what is evident is that on the subject of playing contact sports, women can’t be viewed simply as smaller versions of men. Instead of imposing male injury prevention strategies on women’s rugby, it could be more useful to redirect attention towards understanding the particular injury risks in the ladies’s game. Then we are able to develop tailored injury prevention strategies for female players.