Home Australia Global players union to launch innovative ACL research project

Global players union to launch innovative ACL research project

0 comments
The Australian footballer is surrounded by three defenders at the Asian Cup

This weekend, when Melbourne City take on Sydney FC in the 2023-24 A-League Women (ALW) grand final, three players will be watching and cheering on their teammates from the sidelines.

City forward Holly McNamara and Sydney defenders Natalie Tobin and Kirsty Fenton suffered ACL injuries this season, keeping them out of action for between six months and a year.

They join six other footballers from various ALW clubs in the stands as the season draws to a close, bringing the league’s total ACL injury list to nine.

Like many other professional women’s leagues around the world, Australia’s top competition has been significantly affected by what players have anecdotally described as an “epidemic” of ACL injuries.

Just as she was breaking into the Matildas, Melbourne City striker Holly McNamara tore her ACL – again.(Getty Images: Thananuwat Srirasant)

Female athletes are between two and six times more likely than men to suffer an ACL injury while training or playing their sport – a figure that has not improved despite the rapid professionalisation of women’s football in recent years.

With more and more high-profile footballers such as Sam Kerr, Beth Mead, Vivianne Miedema, Marie-Antoinette Katoto, Leah Williamson, Janine Beckie, Delphine Cascarino and dozens more internationals forced to miss major tournaments in the last two years due to the ACL breaks, while losing valuable income along the way; The calls to action have become louder.

FIFPro, the global players’ union, has finally heeded this call.

Today, the union launched an innovative new program titled “Project ACL” that aims to address the many interrelated factors that put female soccer players at higher risk of tearing their anterior cruciate ligament.

The three-year study will review existing research on ACL injuries in female athletes, conduct evaluations of the resources and structures provided by participating Women’s Super League (WSL) clubs in England, and implement its own digital tool that tracks the WSL players’ playing workload, travel time and high-intensity match minutes in real time, generating more complete and nuanced data on the circumstances in which female footballers are most at risk.

You may also like