Injury research in girls rugby

Eloise Kirby and team are researching injuries within girls rugby. Eloise discusses the findings so far and why sex-specific research matters.

Eloise at Clwb Rygbi Llangefni

Why the research matters

The majority of rugby injury research focuses on men’s rugby and therefore most of the preventative strategies, rehab, return-to-play etc have been developed based on the men’s game.

There is research to suggest that there are sex-based differences in the risk and outcome of injuries in team sports in general. It is important that we investigate this in rugby and tailor preventative strategies accordingly.

Women and girls make up over a quarter of the global rugby playing population, and so research into rugby should reflect this. 

Myself and some of my colleagues at Bangor University are working on the Welsh Injury Surveillance in Girls’ Youth Rugby project. Obviously, that is a bit of a mouthful so WISGYR was born.

It’s a 3 year injury surveillance project funded by World Rugby and supported by the WRU. Essentially, we are collecting data on injuries in girls’ youth rugby in North Wales.

Injury surveillance is the first step in injury prevention. You first have to find out what the problem is so that you can then develop injury prevention strategies.

For example, if you find that a particular injury is widespread in this population you then want to try and develop strategies that aim to reduce the risk of these injuries.

You then test these out by carrying out more injury surveillance to see if they have worked – in theory if the preventative measures are working then you would expect to see less of that particular injury. 

The injury data we are collecting will primarily come from the 9 girls rugby hubs in North Wales. This season myself and the others in our team have been trying to get out and visit the hubs – this gives us a chance to explain the project and get the hubs on board, but it is also an opportunity for us to gain consent off of the players.

The hubs have been really welcoming and kindly allowed us to crash their various End of Season/Awards Nights. We’ve used these as a checkpoint with the hubs to capture any consent forms we may have missed and also ensure that we are up-to-date with their injury reports.  

Findings so far

There are some very preliminary findings at the moment, as we are still finalising the data from this season. I can offer a snapshot what we’ve found so far.  

• The majority of injuries are due to contact rather than non-contact (e.g. running). Typically, injuries are associated with the tackle event which is in line with what you would expect – both tackling and being tackled. 

• In terms of location of injury, the knee and ankle are appearing to be most common, followed by the head/face and thumb.  

• Injury rate also increases with age which is what we may expect to see given the level of contact increasing with age. 

Research into breast health and rugby

I’ve also done some research into breast health and injury in international female rugby players. Myself and my colleagues were lucky enough to be able to do some work with the U18 6N squads whilst they were up in North Wales for this year’s festival.

Graphics from Eloise

Female breasts will be exposed to injury during contact sports (such as rugby) and yet there is a huge paucity of research into this. Traditionally there had not been a specific reporting category for breast injury due to our injury reporting methods being based on male athletes.

There is some emerging research in particular, Brooke Brisbine and her colleagues have done some fantastic work over in Australia however more research is still needed and there hasn’t been any work into the risk in youth players.  

Graphics from Eloise

Of the 83 international U18s players:

• 44% had previously sustained a breast injury whilst playing rugby and of those players,

• 75% had sustained more than one in the past year.

• This was inline with some of those emerging findings with between 36-58% of athletes reporting a breast injury.

Something else that we found mirrored in our study was that the majority of these injuries are going unreported. When players did report them it was to a parent and/or teammate rather than a coach or medical professional.

Key takeaways for us

• Breast injury appears to be common in adolescent women’s rugby

• These injuries are not being reported to coaching or medical professionals  

Over the next season I plan to roll these questionnaires out to our grassroots teams to gain some insight into the risk across different levels and ages.

Hopefully this will help to push for more research into the effects of contact breast injury on the developing breast and for specific breast injury prevention strategies. 

Graphics from Eloise

What’s next?

If you’re part of one of the North Wales girls’ hubs, you can get involved with the study! We are also keen to involve those outside of this area but on a more remote basis.

As hubs and coaches, encourage your players to sign up if they have not done so already. Check out the link below contains both the English and Welsh consent forms.

For the upcoming season, we ask that coaches report any injuries that occur in their games. We will be checking-in with Hub Leads throughout the season but if coaches are able to report these as they occur that will be super helpful.

I will be resharing this link with hubs throughout the season, but they can also find this via link below. If any clubs/coaches need any more info or have any questions just get in touch with myself or the research team! 

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Links to find out more about breast health and rugby:

RFU Women and Girls Health and Wellbeing Hub

Research into breast health at University of Portsmouth

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