Analysis: here's what the data tells us about GAA injuries, from the most common to the risk of reoccurrence
For most GAA players, an injury will happen suddenly. "There's no real warning, it isn’t the little niggle that’s been at the player," says Dr Mark Roe, postdoctoral researcher with the GAA National Injury Surveillance Database at UCD.
When injuries happen, it can be tough for the player and for the team. Limerick captain Declan Hannon has been ruled out of the All Ireland semi-final clash against Galway this weekend thanks to a knee injury he sustained in last month's Munster final. Galway hurler David Burke will also miss the match as he was ruled out for the rest of the season when he suffered an ACL injury during training back in March.
Speaking at a county board meeting earlier this year, Offaly GAA chairperson Michael Duignan said injuries were "devastating" their panels and questioned: "Why are so many people getting injured, especially cruciates? It seems to be out of control with GAA players." He was commenting in the wake of several injuries on the county’s hurling and Gaelic football teams.
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From RTÉ Archives, a 1986 conference at Croke Park examines what can be done about injuries in the GAA
But what does the data tell us about GAA injuries in Ireland? The injury surveillance database has been collecting data on players for over 15 years now. Beginning with a pilot in 2007, it has tracked senior inter-county men's Gaelic football and hurling players since 2008 and later expanded to include players from Academy level (U14s). IRFU and University of Limerick run a similar surveillance system. With the merger of GAA, Camogie Association and LFGA underway, there's "massive space for collaboration" and the surveillance capacity could easily be scaled, he says.
The GAA system is opt-in and players self-report their injuries at all levels so there's consistent data collection across all age groups. This helps build an accurate injury profile for a player and allows for tracking as they age up through the game. Injuries are classified as to whether it’s a physical problem that had no impact on your play or whether it causes you to miss more than 24 hours. The injuries that keep players out for 24h or more are considered 'time-loss injuries', while they’re classified as ‘severe' if they take longer than 28 days to get back.
Players can keep a track of how they’re progressing over the years but so can the association, which would allow them to identify how to better look after player welfare and development. "If you don't have those systems in place", explains Roe, "you essentially have no other way to know. It’s so easy to form opinions and beliefs on things and sometimes when you go look at the data, that's actually not what you see".
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From RTÉ Radio 1's Drivetime, why does Ireland have such a high rate of ACL injuries?
What does the data tell us about where injuries occur?
Roe says we tend to think players could be getting over-used and could be experiencing chronic injuries, but that’s not what they see in the data: Nearly 80% are new injuries rather than recurring and around 70% will be acute with a sudden onset. "That’s really common cross all running-based field sports, whether we're talking about soccer, hurling, AFL. There’s a definitely a proportion of players who do have chronic, overuse injuries, and they can last quite a long time, they can be quite difficult to get on top of, but they're actually relatively rare."
Data shows although GAA players will spend around 90% of their time in training and just 10% of their time in match play, more than half (56%) of time-loss injuries happen during match play and 44% happen during training. So although match play represents just a tenth of the time players engage with their sport, it accounts for the majority of injuries. Broken down by sport, an injury is 13 times more likely to happen during match play than in training in Gaelic football and 21 times more likely in hurling.
Read: Is the dreaded ACL injury on the rise in GAA?
The risk of a player sustaining one or more time-loss injuries in a season is 70% for footballers and 73% for hurlers. Lower limb injuries are the most dominant (hamstring, knee, ankle, groin, adductor, quadriceps) at around 60% to 70% of all injuries and they're nearly all non-contact in nature, he says. All these injuries are pointing to the fact that these players are trying to sprint, stop, accelerate, change direction, to kick a ball, and to jump, says Roe. For reference, research shows elite Gaelic football players run more than 9km in a match and so do the referees.
How much time is lost to injuries?
On average, 30 days are lost per injury in hurling and 26 days in Gaelic football. Within 28 days, eight in ten injuries (81%) sustained in training are resolved, but this goes down to three quarters (75%) of injuries sustained during a match, indicating a tendency towards more severe injuries during match play. This means up to a quarter (20-25%) of players are out for longer than 28 days when they get an injury.
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From RTÉ Brainstorm podcast, Radio GAA GAA: how listening to games abroad is a way for many to maintain their sense of Irishness
How likely is a re-injury to happen?
Once a player does sustain a lower-limb injury, compared to an uninjured player they are 1.6 times more likely to sustain another time-loss injury that takes them off the pitch or out of training for at least 24h. For specific injuries, those rates go up to 3.3 times for a post-hamstring injury, 3.2 post-ankle sprain and 2.5 times higher after a groin injury.
When a player returns to sport the biggest risk of an injury happening again is within the first eight weeks back. Most of those re-injuries will happen in a match. "It’s that sudden exposure again, back to the activity that probably caused the injury in the first place, which is match play," says Roe. "There’s these common patterns that you can begin to do a bit of detective work around once you spot them."
What happens as players get older?
Roe highlights the need for players to be prepared for the increase in demands at adult level. Adults account for 23% of all teams but 86% of all the injury claims to the GAA injury benefit fund. The injury claim rate per team is 20 times higher for adult teams than for youth teams.
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The GAA’s annual report for 2022 shows there were 6606 injury claims in 2022, costing an average of €826 each for a total of €5,454,521. 60% of the claims were for lower-limb injuries (3,983). A third (31,8%) of all the claims were for knee injuries (2,106), accounting for half of all the lower-limb injuries. The majority of those knee injury claims (61,8% or 1,303) were from adult Gaelic football players. But "like most insurance schemes, we have no idea of health or performance outcomes after medical treatments are paid for," Roe says. "Obviously that’s not a scenario that aligns well with evidence-based and player-centred interventions."
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Of course, young players develop over time to be able to keep up with the game, but Roe says there’s a 'savage’ increase in demands at the senior stage. Games get harder as the season goes on, but senior level is also when an 18-year-old could play against someone in their thirties and more all-round players, which might explain we we see the ‘massive leap’ in injuries at senior level, he adds.
Injuries are still rare
"Is the risk of injury as big as what people might make out that it is? I actually think the answer is no. We know that average for every hour of training, over 99% of the time players are going to make it off the pitch. In match play, there’s a 95% chance. 1 in 20 players is probably going to get an injury," says Roe. This "puts it into perspective," he says. "There are a lot of players out there who have quite serious injuries, but that's because we have so many players playing the game." Ireland boasts over 2,000 GAA clubs and hundreds of thousands of players.
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From RTÉ Archives, the life of Michael Cusack one of the founding members of the GAA (broadcast November 27, 1976)
It’s unlikely we’re ever going to prevent injuries because they’re so rare to begin with, Roe says. What’s needed is better treatment and management plans and four essential questions need to be asked: "Can we identify the common injuries? Yes, we can. Can we predict who will sustain them? The answer is no. Have we agreed how we will manage the common injuries? The answer to that is no.
"So the the trick is now, we’ve the system in place, we understand enough of the pattern to begin to get some of the measures in place that we think might make a difference," he says. "So much time goes into training or managing training cycles and so on, I actually don’t think it’s near as important as we think it is. Because the risk of injury in that period is just so, so low.
"But why that matters is, training is the chance you have to prepare for match play. If you want to perform as well as you can, be as developed as you can to go out there and play the game as best as you can, with the lowest chance of injury, I think the attention is shifting to, well what does training for that look like?"
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ.
