ACL injuries are becoming a far too common a story in the AFLW. In the first two rounds this season, six players have suffered the season-ending injury.
Greater Western Sydney star Isabel Huntington suffered her third ACL tear in the first round of season six and says that sporting injuries such as these, particularly in an elite environment, are far-reaching in their impact on athletes’ lives.
Isabel Huntington ruptured an ACL graft in her side’s season opener in season six.Credit: Getty Images
“It’s not just that you can’t play football, but in the AFLW in particular, there’s work and study and social life outside,” said Huntington.
“Sports people are very consumed by what they do and a lot of their identity sort of rides on their performance and whether they can be out there or not. So when that gets taken away, it’s really difficult to deal with and sort of makes a lot of athletes grapple with that identity.”
Huntington adds it’s hard sacrificing so much to play essentially 10-rounds a year “and that can be taken away in an instant, with one bad turn of a knee.”
Despite the AFLW grappling with serious knee injuries since the league began - the first three seasons saw an average of one ACL injury sustained per club, per season - the rates aren’t decreasing.
Notably last season three stars of the league - Huntington, Collingwood co-captain Brianna Davey and Brisbane key defender Kate Lutkins - all did ACLs in the opening round.
Dr Aaron Fox, researcher at Deakin University’s Centre for Sport Research, says there are always going to be growing pains associated with new leagues but the lack of progress to eliminate ACL injuries is hard to accept.
“I don’t think we could eliminate all of these injuries across the seasons [but] the bit I struggle with is that it’s the seventh year of the competition, and we’re literally saying the same stuff as the first year,” he said.
“We knew about it [ACL problem in women’s football] two or three years in and efforts are being made now, but you would like to have seen some sort of return on those efforts by now.”
Fox says part of the problem is that theories and suggestions from research on how to address the issue are often long-term strategies regarding female athlete development and athletic exposure over their lifetime - which are not two-year fixes.
Harriet Cordner ruptured her ACL against the Dockers in January.Credit: Getty Images
Dr Kate Webster, Associate Health Professor at La Trobe University, agreed, saying preventative programs are being implemented across women’s football competition, including at the elite level, but time is needed to see their impact. This includes the warm-up risk minimisation program “Prep-to-Play”, which is used by the AFL.
“The more risk reduction strategies that can be put in place, the better because we know that they work if they’re adopted,” Webster said, adding though that “the data is only just being collected now to see if they make a difference and how much of a difference they make.”
Yet Fox says, there are things that can be done now to reduce injury risk.
“There needs to be a bigger maybe emphasis or focus on injury prevention in the current AFLW players training as a means to focus on reducing the risk of injuries. But then you sort of run into issues with how much time these players have available from a training standpoint,” said Fox.
He explained the high rates of ACL injuries in women’s football involves a culmination of factors including the infancy of the league, limited training time and resources and managing football with other employment.
“Then when you have players who are perhaps new to the sport or inexperienced in the sport coming into that multi-directional, 360 degree movement that Australian football entails, combined with the fact that they get limited preparation when they’re not full time professional athletes … all of those various factors combined.”
Fox also said that although he wouldn’t blame the changing season date and shortened preseason as fault for the ACLs this season, it probably “compounded an already big issue”.
Huntington says, for her, a lot of it comes down to not being fulltime and having limited time at the club for preventative measures, especially in-season when focus turns to performance.
“We’ve had a bit of an increase in hours now but still things are so rushed at the club. Basically, everything the boys do, we just have to condense into a shorter time frame, and do that after a full day of work or study or other commitments.
“So things like injury prep and prehab and those sort of things are really difficult to sort of find the time for ... when you’ve got limited time. It’s like sometimes that just sort of gets neglected a little bit.”
Huntington added she’d like to see more research in the space, especially as historically, there’s been a lack of research on female athletes and women in general.
“I think just funding research and continuing along that pathway is also going to be really big as well. And also playing at good facilities, I think that helps.”
In the meantime, she’d like to see female athletes, and in particular in the AFLW, be afforded more time to be supported in risk minimisation and preventative strategies.