Call for Sport Australia to provide more awareness around ACL injury prevention in AFLW

With five AFLW players suffering season-ending anterior cruciate ligament injuries this season, a leading researcher has called for more awareness around the prevention of the horrific injury.

Nina Morrison, the AFLW’s No.1 draft pick in 2018, injured her knee during training after a brilliant debut. Picture: Getty Images

The lead researcher into ACL injuries in women’s football has called on Sport Australia to provide nationwide education.

Fremantle debutant Brianna Moyes became the fifth AFLW player to suffer an anterior cruciate ligament injury this year when she went down in the first quarter of the Dockers’ win against Collingwood on Saturday.

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Nina Morrison, the AFLW’s No.1 draft pick in 2018, injured her knee during training after a brilliant debut. Picture: Getty Images

The AFL has developed injury prevention guidelines, using research led by Professor Kay Crossley, the director of sport and exercise medicine research centre at La Trobe University.

Crossley said responsibility to help to try to prevent injuries rests with the league, clubs, the players and also Sport Australia, the federal-government funded peak policy and advisory body.

Research shows women are two to 10 times more likely to injure an ACL than men.

“We’ve known about this gender bias for a long, long time now and we’ve known about these injury prevention programs for a long time so I think it is a Sport Australia issue,” Crossley said.

“It is a governance issue where we say it’s not just for girls playing football, it’s for girls playing netball, girls playing basketball, girls playing volleyball, and saying how about we provide better education to coaches nationwide and maybe build it into our coach accreditation.”

The AFL’s “prep to play” program has two elements; trying to make female athletes stronger and then also trying to get the players to jump and land with the knee over the foot.

Players are encouraged to do three, thirty-minute sessions per week.

Brianna Moyes is the latest AFLW player to suffer an ACL injury. Picture: AAP

The program also has training drills to educate on the best way to tackle and approach a ground-ball and aerial contest.

“They’re the three areas that have been identified as increasing your risk of not only an ACL injury, but also perhaps hitting your head or your hand,” she said.

“(The guidelines) take what is being done around the world and adds on elements that can be incorporated into training specifically in the areas that are relevant for Australian football.”

Research out of America and Europe shows there are several potential risk factors for women doing an ACL injury including: being more flexible than men, hormones, genetics, movement patterns and strength.

Crossley said it was hard to tell when the injury prevention programs would start having a positive effect.

“Based on the research that’s been done overseas, it looks like one to two years is where we’re really going to start to see the difference,” she said.

“Ideally we’d see some difference before then.”

Sport Australia said the AIS is delivering a broad injury prevention program to Olympic, Paralympic and Commonwealth Games sports.

“ Sport Australia and the AIS are exploring the potential of how these strategies can be developed further to have a broader reach, into other national sporting organisations and community sport,” a spokesman said.

Crow Rhiannon Metcalfe injured her knee during the pre-season. Picture: Sarah Reed

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