Hamstring injuries are one of the most common injuries sustained in sports, especially those which involve sprinting, accelerating and deceleration! Gaelic Football is Ireland’s national sport. It can be described as a high intensity, high-velocity, multidirectional, contact field game requiring speed, strength and agility (Mc Intyre, 2005).
The movements required in Gaelic football are very similar to that of other field based sports. There is therefore a close correlation between Gaelic, football and AFL injury incidences and injury pattern.
The work by Ekstrand J (2009) (Football), Murphy et al (2012) (Gaelic Football) and Orchard M.J (2014) (AFL) supports this. These studies show that Hamstring strains and tears are the most prevalent and common injury accounted for.
http://bjsm.bmj.com/content/45/7/553.abstract
(UEFA)
http://bjsm.bmj.com/content/36/1/39.full
(AFL)
Murphy et al (2012) conducted a four year prospective study, on the incidence and rate of injury in Gaelic games. It is the largest study to date in the GAA. Murphy noted that over a four year period on 851 inter county footballers, 1014 injuries occurred in 587 participants. The resulting rate of players sustaining an injury over a four year period was 69 %, nearly three quarters of the participants in the study. (Murphy et al, 2012).
The Key Points from his study are as follows;
•Muscle injury was the most common type of injury in Gaelic Games accounting for 42.6% of all injuries
•The average time lost for injury was 19.7 days
•The Hamstring was the most prevalent injury recorded over the four year period accounting for 24 % of all injuries
Murphy et al(2012)
From the research based above on Football, Gaelic and AFL, we gather that there is most definitely a need to focus specifically on strengthening the Hamstring muscle group.
As a physiotherapist and S&C coach , we can do this by implementing strategies and exercises into our gym programmes ,warm ups and rehabilitation.
In trying to reduce the number of initial and recurrent hamstring strains in football, prevention of initial injury is paramount.