Matildas captain Sam Kerr could keep her Paris Olympics dream alive without having invasive surgery on her ruptured anterior cruciate ligament, according to leading Sydney sports doctor Tom Cross.
The 30-year-old suffered the devastating injury while attending a camp for her Women’s Super League side, Chelsea, in Morocco.
Most experts have already put a red line through her prospects of competing in Paris. The Olympic football tournament starts in just over six months.
Recovery time from ACL surgery is normally about nine to 12 months, sometimes longer depending on the severity and nature of the rupture.
But Cross says Kerr could be a candidate for the revolutionary bracing system he devised alongside his late father, Merv, a pioneer in knee reconstruction for elite athletes.
As revealed by this masthead in June last year, the “Cross Bracing Protocol” requires patients to “bend the knee”, which means setting the knee in a brace at 90 degrees for four weeks before progressively straightening it over a 12-week period.
Matildas captain Sam Kerr.Credit: Getty
The procedure avoids aggressive surgery and allows the ligament to heal on its own.
Cross, who is holidaying in Europe, said he was prepared to give Kerr an honest opinion on whether the bracing procedure would work — but he would need to examine an MRI scan to see if she was eligible.
“The answer is yes,” Cross said when asked if it could be an option for Kerr. “But this would be better dependent on the pattern of ACL injury seen on MRI. That is, would ‘bending the knee’ adequately approximate her ruptured ACL tissues?
“If the MRI classifies her as an excellent or good candidate for the ‘Cross Bracing Protocol’, Sam and her family and medical team, coaching staff and management all have to favour adopting a novel pioneering approach to heal her ACL.”
Merv Cross, seated, with son Tom and the brace used to heal ACL ruptures without surgery.Credit: Wolter Peeters
Whether Chelsea – and Kerr for that matter – would be prepared to undergo the revolutionary procedure is the question.
While the bracing protocol has been peer-reviewed in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, and hundreds of patients have seen their ACL successfully healed without surgery – including, Cross says, female soccer players – it remains a risk for professional athletes.
If the bracing technique doesn’t work, and surgery is then required, the athlete has wasted three months of recovery time.
Cross also recommends to his patients a timeframe to return to sport of nine to 12 months, although a 17-year-old rugby player has returned within seven months.
“This is a much more difficult decision for elite athletes,” Cross, who has worked with the Sydney Swans and Melbourne Storm, said. “Most will choose the tried and tested ACL reconstructive surgery and I understand this.
“But I would be happy to give Sam an opinion. She is a magnificent Australian and Australian athlete.”
Cross assisted his father in countless knee reconstructions for some of the world’s leading athletes. But their beliefs about how to remedy an ACL rupture changed in 2014, two years after Merv had retired.
A young netballer was in tears at Tom’s clinic at Moore Park and Merv — who was having rehab following his own knee reconstruction — suggested bracing the knee instead.
Another early patient was Matthew Dowsett – Merv’s grandson – who had torn his ACL after suffering a hip-drop tackle while playing rugby union for Sydney University. He also made a full recovery and became the second author to the research.
The key to the ACL healing is timing. Ideally, knees are braced within four to seven days after the injury has occurred.
What happens next is likened to the movie Avatar when members of the Na’vi tribe magically connect their tails with a direhorse’s mane.
“If you get in early, and bend the knee at 90 degrees, that’s where the ACL is shortest,” Merv said last year. “Therefore, those two ruptured ends come together. Just like putting broken bones back in position. That gives you a chance to heal. The clock is ticking. If you don’t do it early enough, you will have two capped or closed-over stumps incapable of healing.”
Kerr at a Chelsea training session during the summer camp in Morocco where she ruptured her ACL.Credit: Getty
Merv died in August last year at the age of 82, but his legacy lives on through his son.
“In 50 per cent of patients we believe it’s like getting in a time machine and giving you back your knee, untouched, like it was a millisecond before you injured it,” Tom said.
“No one’s taken your hamstring or your patella tendon. No one’s drilled tunnels through your knee.
“You don’t have a tendon trying to change its character and become a ligament. A healed ACL has its own beautiful, anatomical origin and insertion. Its own blood and nerve supply. All these things are important.”
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