Hamstring injuries still the biggest injury headache in the AFL, according to latest survey

HAMSTRING injuries have rocked the Crows’ season and they remain the biggest injury headache for AFL clubs, according to the league’s latest injury survey.

Adelaide’s Taylor Walker leaves the playing field with "hamstring awareness" in the round six clash with Gold Coast. Picture: Sarah Reed

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HAMSTRING injuries have rocked the Crows’ season and they remain the biggest injury headache for AFL clubs, according to the league’s latest injury survey.

Figures released from the 2017 season show that hamstring injuries remain the AFL’s most common injury, with an average of 4.9 new injuries at each club resulting in an average of 16.6 matches missed.

The positive news was that those numbers, which have slowly dropped in each of the past four years, were the lowest recorded in seven seasons and that 4.9 fewer matches were lost per club to hamstring injuries than they were in 2012 and 9.2 less than a decade ago.

The recurrence rate for hamstring injuries of 14 per cent last season is also trending in the right direction after being as high as 27 per cent in 2008.

Adelaide however has taken a major step backwards with its hamstrings issues this year.

The grand finalist has had the worst injury run in the competition, with damaged hamstrings accounting for most of its casualty list.

At one stage, nine Crows strained hamstrings in a seven-week period following the summer introduction of new muscle-strengthening training methods which have since been scaled back.

Adelaide’s Taylor Walker with an ice pack on his left hamstring during a pre-season game. Picture: Sarah Reed

Adelaide currently has four players — Eddie Betts, Riley Knight, Sam Gibson and Andrew McPherson — on its injury list with hamstring problems but Knight and Gibson could resume this week after spells on the sidelines.

Key players, including captain Taylor Walker and club champion Matt Crouch, have missed games with hamstring issues this year.

“We certainly looked at the issue and made some minor adjustments,’’ Crows head of football Brett Burton said.

The 2017 injury survey results showed the overall injury incident, prevalence and recurrence rates remained stable compared to recent seasons.

There were fewer injuries per club than 2016 (35.1, down from 37) and the recurrence rate (eight per cent) dipped into single digits for the first time since 2012.

However there was a small rise in games missed (141.3, up from 139.8).

Concussion rates remained on par with the previous year, with teams recording about seven diagnosed concussions each with the average number of matches missed per side (4.2) down from 5.6 in 2016.

The average incident of calf injuries was 2.1 per club after climbing to 3.7 in 2012.

“The health and safety of all players is a major priority and our annual injury survey provides information that is used on work with our clubs, research board and others to continue to find ways to decrease the incidence and prevalence of injuries as well as improving management and recovery protocols,” AFL football operations manager Steve Hocking said.

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