Latest news with #ACLinjuries
News.com.au
22-07-2025
- Sport
- News.com.au
Carlton veteran Sam Docherty will play his final game against Hawthorn on Thursday night
After overcoming two bouts of testicular cancer and two ACL injuries to forge an AFL career which included All-Australian honours and a club best and fairest, Carlton star Sam Docherty has announced his retirement. Docherty will play his 18th and final game against Hawthorn on Friday night, having established himself as a player Carlton coach Michael Voss said had turned very challenge he'd faced into a 'triumph'. Not only was Docherty a best and fairest winner at Carlton, he also captained the club, having overcome a raft of battles to forge a career to remember. Docherty missed all of the 2018 and 2019 seasons after undergoing back-to-back ACL reconstructions. But on his return in 2020 to he was diagnosed with the first of two bouts of testicular cancer. Docherty underwent multiple surgeries and chemotherapy treatment, returning to football on both occasions amid a journey full of ' resilience, strength and on and off-field brilliance'. The 31-year-old said he'd been able to live his dream, despite the hurdles he had to jump. 'When I was a kid my entire family used to climb into a van and drive from Phillip Island to the MCG for Round 1 every year,' Docherty said. 'For me to get the chance to go on and play in those games, and also captain the club that I grew up supporting – I can honestly say it's a dream come true,' Docherty said. 'To have built the most incredible friendships over the last 14 years which I will take with me for the rest of my life, I am so incredibly thankful and I appreciate everyone who has supported me through it all. 'Perspective is such a valuable thing, and that is what I am most grateful for in my career. When my career started I thought a footballer had to define themselves by the accolades they achieved: while I am certainly grateful for those that have come my way, I will leave this game with so much more. 'The experiences I have had not just in my football career, but in life, have moved the goalposts for me – while there has been no shortage of challenges, because of what I have been through I have been allowed to meet so many amazing people and have had the opportunity to have an impact far greater than kicking or handballing a football ever could.' Blues coach Voss paid tribute to Docherty and what he has meant to the Carlton Football Club. 'For every challenge Sam has faced, he has turned it into a triumph,' Voss said. 'I still remember clear as day the first face-to-face conversation I had with Sam at the back end of 2021: we went for a walk and he told me he was going to play in Round 1 in a few months' time. To see him defy the odds and do that, to kick that goal against the Tigers – that typifies what a remarkable mindset he has. 'He has captained our club, won a best and fairest, All Australian and been a sounding board for so many of our younger players, and all those things only tell half the story of the Sam Docherty impact. What he has done and will keep doing in the community continues to be an inspiration. 'Our football club is forever grateful for Sam and the sacrifices he made to be able to pull on the Navy Blue – we wish him, his wife Nat and Ruby and Myles nothing but happiness for their next chapter. They know they will always be able to call Carlton home.'
Reuters
30-06-2025
- Sport
- Reuters
ACL injuries continue to plague women's football
MANCHESTER, England, June 30 (Reuters) - Leah Williamson was on top of the world in early 2023, playing the best football of her career for Arsenal and England and featured in advertisements ahead of the 2023 Women's World Cup, when a torn anterior cruciate ligament forced her to a screeching halt. The 28-year-old was one of almost 30 players that missed that World Cup due to ACL injuries. She is among numerous players whose knee injuries have amplified the conversation around ACL tears, which have caused turmoil in the women's game because of the huge toll they take on players and teams. While Williamson made a full recovery and is back to lead England at the European Championship that kicks off on Tuesday in Switzerland, the injury remains a hot topic, with Spain's Teresa Abelleira, Ramona Bachmann of Switzerland and England's Ella Morris among players out of the Euros with ACL tears. Sophie Ingle was named to Wales' squad despite the fact she has not played since she tore hers in September. "ACL injuries have existed as long as women's football has existed," Alex Culvin, the Head of Strategy and Research for Women's Football at global players union FIFPRO, told Reuters. "It's really important that we prioritise ACL injury. It's a holistic injury and affects players' careers in a holistic way. "Not only do they miss a minimum nine months, in a career of 10 years you're twice, three times as likely to do another ACL injury. And then you've got to think about the commercial opportunities and the career opportunities that players lose through this injury. "Take Leah Williamson, she was Nike's poster person, and then next minute she's not playing. She obviously has come back and is an outstanding player, but the commercial and career opportunities that she loses in that snap second..." While studies show there has not been an increase in ACL injuries in women's football over the last 20 years, and ACLs only account for 2% of time-loss injuries in elite women's football, women are up to eight times more susceptible to suffer the injury than their male counterparts. Australia and Chelsea striker Sam Kerr, considered one of the best goalscorers in the game, is one of the staggering 500-plus elite female players who have torn their ACLs since 2022. She suffered the injury in early 2024, and has not played since. While an elite women's team can expect one ACL injury per season, Arsenal were severely impacted when they lost four players, including Williamson, over six months in 2022-23. Forward Beth Mead was one of the four. She also missed the 2023 World Cup but is back with England at the Euros, dedicating the tournament to her late mother June, who died of cancer two months after Mead tore her ACL. She has been vocal about her mental health struggle which is already an issue for players during ACL recovery, but was amplified with the death of her mum. "Because of the injury I couldn't play football, which was always my escape, my happy place," Mead said. "Moments when people thought I was fine because of my outgoing personality, were very dark." Culvin, who is also a senior lecturer at Leeds Beckett University, stressed research into ACL injuries must look at the bigger picture. "People want a quick fix, and what we're saying is ACL injury is multifactorial," she said. "We can't say it's workload, or we can't say it's the way women run or they land, or they jump, or whatever it is. We're saying that there's so many factors that go into it that it's really hard to determine one or two factors, we want to look at in a holistic sense." Culvin is part of Project ACL, a three-year study launched by FIFPRO, the Professional Footballers' Association, Nike and Leeds Beckett University that is focusing on England's Women's Super League, but plans to expand to study other leagues as well. "There's a mismatch between levels of professionalization and the expectations on players to perform in substandard environments. And the big one for us is looking at environments as modifiable risk factors," she said. "Obviously you've got non-modifiable risk factors which are predominantly physiological, but you've got modifiable risk factors which count for calendar, number of games, travel and then actual physical environments that players play in, and the working environments, and that's what our focus is for this research." A FIFA-funded study at Kingston University is investigating whether fluctuations during menstrual cycles could be contributing to the career-threatening knee injuries. While experts discount the notion of an epidemic in elite football, UEFA's chief medical officer Zoran Bahtijarevic said numbers are on the rise at the youth level as girls flock to the game. A recent study by Nielsen Sports and PepsiCo found that player growth among girls has soared, particularly in Asia, with China seeing a 300% rise, and Europe, led by France at 150%. "We can expect an epidemic of ACL injuries somewhere else, below the radar, with the explosion of participation," Bahtijarevic told Reuters. "The peak of injuries in women is between ages of 15-16 and 19. These go undetected, because these girls are not big stars."
Yahoo
27-06-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Matildas coach responds after worrying scenes despite win without Kerr and Fowler
The Matildas have started life under Joe Montemurro with a 3-0 win over Slovenia with Sam Kerr and Mary Fowler both out with ACL injuries, but the coach was left frustrated with a few mistakes as he tries to implement his style. Hayley Raso returned for the Matildas and was the star of the show having scored a cracking third goal in the victory in Perth on Thursday. But adapting to Montemurro's new style of play has proven to be a challenge for the team. Montemurro often deploys a more possession-based game plan than what some of the Matildas players are accustomed to during their time in the national jersey. And it showed with the players giving the ball away time and time again. This allowed Slovenia to record a massive 30 shots on target across the contest. Despite struggling in possession and making errors, the class of the Matildas was on display having made the crucial plays when it mattered. While life under Montemurro started with a victory, the former Lyon coach was left unimpressed with certain areas of their performance. "It was an entertaining game. It could have been 6-5 or 7-6 or something," Montemurro said. "But for me, it was a very important test, because a team that will play player-on-player in that manner, we have to learn to be better under these circumstances, because a lot of teams will do this now in modern football When you want to play a game where you're breaking lines and preparing to break lines and you're playing under pressure, you are going to make mistakes." Although Montemurro admitted the players need to learn to suffer with and without the ball to return to the top level again with the Matildas dropping to their equal-lowest ranking in years. "You are going to make errors, and I'm demanding this, because for us to be at the top level, we have to be comfortable doing this. We made three or four big errors in that. But I'm not concerned, because it's the process going forward," he added. "For me, it was the perfect game against a team that's obviously pressured all over the pitch. We have to be comfortable under that pressure." Fortunately for Montemurro, the 3-0 win came with a host of superstars missing from the side. Alongside Kerr and Fowler, the Matildas were missing stars Steph Catley, Caitlin Foord, Katrina Gorry, Cortnee Vine and Clare Wheeler. Many are taking an extended rest after a long European season. Just as Montemurro was announced as the new coach of the Matildas, Kerr suffered a fresh injury. Kerr has not played football in more than 16 months after tearing her ACL during training for her club side Chelsea. And earlier this month, it was revealed Kerr underwent surgery on a separate injury. Little is known about her recovery timeline, with Kerr and partner Kristie Mews recently taking a break and holidaying in the off-season. However, the Matildas superstar handed fans an update having posted footage of her back training and running with the ball during a Chelsea session. Although she was once again excluded from the Matildas squad with fans increasingly interested over when she will make a comeback. The Matildas superstar has been undergoing her recovery and was a hope to line-up for Chelsea, before their record breaking Women's Super League season came to an end. Although this didn't come to fruition with the plan for Kerr to remain in England and continue her recovery with Chelsea. Fowler remains out having also suffered an ACL injury towards the end of Manchester City's season. The Matildas star has been undergoing recovery with her club side having been told she can't travel after surgery. This meant she wasn't able to return home to watch partner Nathan Cleary in State of Origin.
The Guardian
13-05-2025
- Health
- The Guardian
New research into menstrual cycles offers hope of reducing ACL injuries
'I've had not one, two, but three ACL tears – all three have been on my period.' Those were the frank words of the double World Cup-winning former United States international Megan Rapinoe, speaking on her podcast A Touch More with Sue Bird & Megan Rapinoe on 8 May, as they expressed their exasperation at how long it has taken for more in-depth research to be conducted regarded the relationship between menstrual cycles and serious knee injuries in female athletes. Finally, though, something is happening. Trying to help address the issue, with the ultimate aim of reducing instances of anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injuries, is a new, year-long academic study at Kingston University in London, which has received funding from football's world governing body, Fifa. Starting in June, the university's sports science experts Dr Simon Augustus, Dr James Brouner and Dr Michelle Richards, and the project's lead, PhD student Blake Rivers, will analyse hormone concentrations from blood samples collected from 20 to 25 adult female players, aged between 18 and 35, and then examine how they perform specific movement tests at different stages of their individual menstrual cycles. 'We know the hormones fluctuate within those different phases of the menstrual cycle and some of them might be related to things like increased ligament laxity or decreases in neuromuscular control,' says Dr Augustus, senior lecturer in sport biomechanics. 'What we want to do then is to correlate that with how they perform certain physical-performance tests so, in terms of being able to identify ACL injury risk, we do things like change-of-direction tests or a landing test, and really we want to see whether the changes we see in terms of physiology, in terms of the hormone profiles, whether they extend through to changes in their functional movement patterns and how they actually perform these various tasks which might be ones that are indicative of injury risk.' ACL injuries have been prominent in the sport for decades but the issue has been brought into sharp focus in recent years after a string of high-profile cases, such as when the former Ballon d'Or winner Alexia Putellas tore her ACL on the eve of the last European Championship finals at a time when she was widely considered to be the world's best women's player, or when the England captain Leah Williamson suffered the same injury and missed the 2023 World Cup. However, it is much more widespread than those headline cases: in the Women's Super League alone, there are 14 players out with ACL injuries. Experts are not expecting to be able to completely eradicate the problem but the science will aim to help reduce the risk, as Dr Augustustold Moving the Goalposts: 'There are going to be certain injury occurrences that are unavoidable, if you get a bad tackle, your leg is in the wrong position, no matter how much science we can do in terms of the research. 'The ones we might have the potential to intervene with, and lower the rates of, are the ones that seem to happen when players are performing an action on their own, where there are no external forces, no external contact, so ones like when they are changing direction or landing from a header, when they seem to be slightly off-balance. 'These are the ones where, if we can get a really good holistic understanding of the load-demands that are placed on the skeletal and muscular systems, and the various factors surrounding that, if we can really understand how those contribute to the loads placed on the player, then – whether via strength and conditioning, load-management or looking at players' techniques as they develop up through the age groups – these are the ones that we might be able to intervene with and help prevent.' That said, there is not expected to be a one-size-fits-all model for how to mitigate hormonal changes during a player's period. As Dr Augustus explains: 'The important thing to say with this is it's extremely variable within women. If you think about a menstrual cycle, the 'average', which probably doesn't really exist, is 28-35 days, and we know that within naturally ovulating and menstruating women, there should be a certain profile, but even within that, there's going to be a huge variation in terms of how those hormones are released within the individual. 'That's even before we start to think about the many different types of contraceptives that the athletes could be taking, and different contraceptives will do different things to those hormone profiles. So, again, what we're really going to have to get to grips with is making sure we understand the individual profiles of the athletes we're investigating, because that's going to be key if we're going to make meaningful conclusions.' The findings of Kingston's study will be sent to Fifa next year and Dr Augustus added: 'For them to back it and give us some finance to do the project justice is great for us and great for everyone that is pushing towards a greater understanding of these types of things in the women's game. Studies have looked at this before but have potentially not been performed very well. 'The work we're doing is a smaller part of a much bigger jigsaw puzzle in this area. We hope the findings we produce will help contribute, ultimately, to reducing ACL injury rates, but it's part of a much wider effort. There are a lot of different factors.' We want carnage! It's tactically going to be crazy, which I think is what we want. It will make everyone laugh and it is entertaining. My players want to play in it. We'll have to learn the format as we go. The first one will just be utter carnage and fun' – the Manchester United manager, Marc Skinner, discussing his side's upcoming participation in the inaugural World Sevens Football competition in Portugal. Flocking to Switzerland: Ticket sales for July's Euros have reached 550,000, Uefa has revealed, seeing the tournament edge closer to surpassing the record cumulative attendance for the women's event from 2022 in England which was 574,875. Overall, there are 673,000 available tickets for the tournament, meaning that just over 120,000 remain, with under two months to go before the event kicks off in Switzerland. Of the tickets sold so far, 137,000 were purchased by fans from outside of Switzerland, which is forecasted to see an injection of at least 180 million Swiss Francs into the local their prizes: The Spain and Arsenal midfielder Mariona Caldentey was named as the WSL's player of the year at the league's inaugural end-of-season awards night on Sunday, while the Netherlands and Manchester City forward Vivianne Miedema was awarded goal of the season for her curling strike into the top corner at Villa Park. The English second-tier's player of the year prize went to Isobel Goodwin of London City Lionesses, while an award for the best matchday experience went to Manchester City. Swanson announcement: The United States forward Mallory Swanson has announced she is pregnant. The 27-year-old and her husband, Dansby Swanson, a Major League Baseball player, revealed on social media they are expecting their first child and said the news was their 'greatest blessing'. Mallory Swanson, who helped the USA win gold at last summer's Olympics, has not played for Chicago Stars this season, because of what had initially been explained as personal reasons. The latest Women's Football Weekly podcast will be out on Tuesday. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. Barcelona scored nine goals as they wrapped up their 10th Spanish league title and their sixth Liga F triumph in a row, with their 9-0 win on Sunday away at Real Betis, who were relegated with the defeat. Here is Alexia Putellas scoring the seventh after a nice one-two. The WSL season is over, and here's our unrivalled writers' review of the 2024-25 campaign. Good news for Sarina Wiegman and England – three key players are back in the squad after injury. Tom Garry has more. And will a long winless run and 11th-place finish in the WSL cost Tottenham manager Robert Vilahamn his job?
