Anyone who saw Erin Phillips crash to the Adelaide Oval turf last weekend in the AFLW grand final knows it was a moment that will stay in the mind for a long time.
It was heart-wrenching. Both she and we knew straight away that it was likely an anterior cruciate ligament tear.
It felt a little closer to home for me than perhaps most others. Last September my 16-year-old daughter was just starting to shine in open representative netball, but on a Monday night at the Genea Netball Centre in Homebush Bay she changed direction and her ACL snapped. There was also no doubt for her. Her tears at the time weren’t because of the pain so much as they were because she knew what she was going to miss over the next 12 months. For a sporting dad it was hard to watch.
But they are not alone. We hear about ACL tears all the time. Erin Phillips, Alex Rance, Kim Green and Wade Graham are some of the higher profile sporting identities; however, the figures outside the best-known names are simply staggering.
Erin Phillips of the Adelaide Crows (Mark Brake/Getty Images)
New research recently finalised confirmed that there were almost 200,000 ACL reconstructions performed in the 15 years to June 2015. The worrying finding to come out of the numbers were that the annual incidence of reconstructions has increased by 43 per cent for the general population over the 15 years and by 74 per cent for people under 25 years of age. In other words, ACL tears are becoming more and more common.
In 2014-15 the peak incidence for males was for those in the 20 to 24-year-old bracket (283 per 100,000). For females peak incidence was in the 15 to 19-year-old bracket (164 per 100,000). The fastest growth was in the five to 14-year-old age group.
The reasons for this appear fairly straightforward. Despite females being anywhere between two and ten times more likely to rupture their ACL depending on the sport played, the higher male participation rates in AFL explain the higher rates in the male population. With the growth of the AFLW and more female participation, the incidence of ACL tears from AFL will grow. For females the concentration in the 15 to 19-year-old bracket probably represents declining sports participation after that age.
For the younger kids there are no clear-cut conclusions as to why injury rates are growing, but too much screen time followed by intense training and matches may be a factor. There is a lack of free play in today’s society.
A lot of work is being done to try and reverse the growth trend via prevention strategies. Research has shown that the risk of serious knee injury can be reduced by different exercises to increase strength, balance and agility. Sporting bodies are taking it seriously, with Netball Australia, for example, rolling out its extend play (KNEE) program. The same exercises are used in the final stages of ACL rehabilitation.
This education process across a number of sporting codes should reduce the occurrence of ACL tears across the whole spectrum of Australian sport. Erin Phillips and my daughter are currently in different sporting stratospheres but both will be back in their chosen sport soon enough. They will put trust in the rehab and hope like crazy that it doesn’t happen again.
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