Match and Training Injuries in Rugby League

Abstract

Rugby league is an international collision sport played by junior, amateur, semiprofessional and professional players. The game requires participants to be involved in physically demanding activities such as running, tackling, passing and sprinting, and musculoskeletal injuries are common. A review of injuries in junior and senior rugby league players published in Sports Medicine in 2004 reported that injuries to the head and neck and muscular injuries were common in senior rugby league players, while fractures and injuries to the knee were common in junior players. This current review updates the descriptive data on rugby league epidemiology and adds information for semiprofessional, amateur and junior levels of participation in both match and training environments using studies identified through searches of PubMed, CINHAL, Ovid, MEDLINE, SCOPUS and SportDiscus databases. This review also discusses the issues surrounding the definitions of injury exposure, injury rate, injury severity and classification of injury site and type for rugby league injuries. Studies on the incidence of injuries in rugby league have suffered from inconsistencies in the injury definitions utilized. Some studies on rugby league injuries have utilized a criterion of a missed matchas an injury definition, total injury incidences or a combination of both time-loss and non-time-loss injuries, while other studies have incorporated a medical treatment injury definition. Efforts to establish a standard definition for rugby league injuries have been difficult, especially as some researchers were not in favour of a definition that was all-encompassing and enabled non-time-loss injuries to be recorded. A definition of rugby league injury has been suggested based on agreement by a group of international researchers. The majority of injuries occur in the match environment, with rates typically increasing as the playing level increases. However, professional level injury rates were reportedly less than semiprofessional participation. Only a few studies have reported training injuries in rugby league, where injury rates were reported to be less than match injuries. Approximately 16-30% of all rugby league injuries have been reported as severe, which places demands upon other team members and, if the player returns to playing too early, places them at an increased risk of further injuries. Early research in rugby league identified that ligament and joint injuries were the common injuries, occurring primarily to the knee. More recently, studies have shown a change in anatomical injury sites at all levels of participation. Although the lower limb was the frequent injury region reported previously, the shoulder has now been reported to be the most common injury site. Changes in injury site and type could be used to prompt further research and development of injury reduction programmes to readdress the issue of injuries that occur as a result of participation in rugby league activities. Further research is warranted at all participation levels of rugby l...

Semi-Professional Rugby League Players have Higher Concussion Risk than Professional or Amateur Participants: A Pooled Analysis

“…Five review studies [3,9,14,20,21] were included in the data collection but were not utilised for the pooled analysis. The studies selected for inclusion reported rugby league match [7,13,[22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38] (n = 19) and training [7,13,[39][40][41][42] (n = 6) concussion injuries within their datasets (see Table 1).…”

“…There have been nine key findings from these previous studies [9,10,13]. (1) There was no difference between injury rates for first and reserve grade players [9]; (2) there were significant differences between injury rates for different sites of the body, with the lower limbs having the highest injury rate [9]; (3) there was a small but not significant risk of injury when playing as a forward compared with playing as a back [9]; (4) more concussions were recorded in amateur than professional (risk ratio [RR] 2.4 [95 % confidence interval (CI) 1.5-3.8]; p = 0.0002), semi-professional (RR 3.0 [95 % CI 1.8-5.1]; p \ 0.0001) and junior (RR 2.5 [95 % CI 1.2-5.5]; p = 0.0132) studies [10]; (v) the lower limb was the most common injury recorded (5.7 [95 % CI 5.1-5.8] per 1000 training hours) for all studies reporting training sessions [10]; (6) there were more concussions recorded in semi-professional than amateur (RR 13.5 [95 % CI 4.2-43.9]; p \ 0.0001) training session studies [10]; (7) the non-time-loss (NTL) match injury rate was 5.6 (95 % CI 5.0-6.4) times higher than the time-loss (TL) injury rate [13]; (8) lacerations to the head and neck accounted for 77 % (95 % CI 70-83) of all NTL lacerations [13]; and (9) NTL concussions accounted for 71 % (95 % CI 58-80) of all concussions [13].…”

Desempenho muscular isocinético dos ombros em atletas de rúgbi

“…Além do rúgbi caracterizar-se como um esporte de contato e de muita exigência física, os movimentos específicos como maul, ruck, scrum (formação ordenada) e tackle (placagem) aumentam significativamente o risco de lesões musculoesqueléticas durante os treinamentos e jogos [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]. Apesar das lesões na região da cabeça e dos membros inferiores ainda serem as mais comumente reportadas, alguns estudos têm relatado um aumento na frequência de lesões na articulação do ombro, tanto em atletas profissionais como amadores [4,[9][10][11][12].…”

“…A revisão de literatura de King et al [2] demonstrou que o complexo articular do ombro é responsável por 28% das lesões musculoesqueléticas do rúgbi, enquanto a recente revisão de Kaux et al [3] apresentou uma percentagem menor (6,5%) de lesões nessa região. Em outra recente revisão de literatura, Papalia et al [13] descrevem que as lesões no complexo articular do ombro estão relacionadas a severos danos aos tecidos moles que envolvem especificamente essa articulação, também denominada de glenoumeral.…”

The Seven Step Approach to the Application of Sports Science in English Professional Rugby League: Practical Considerations in Strength and Conditioning

“…Of particular interest has been research into injury incidence in different settings and at different levels of performance (e.g. Hodgson et al [1]; Gabbett [2]; Gabbett [3]; King et al [4]). …”