Why are women footballers facing ACL injuries? Simon Collings explains

Transcript

00:00 I think it was pretty revealing when the FA announced the injury that Kiera Walsh had

00:05 suffered after that Denmark game. They took the step of specifying what it wasn't rather

00:10 than what it was. And if you think about that for a second, it's very uncommon for what

00:16 you would do normally in football. You would state the injury someone's had. But while

00:19 they were still working out to find out exactly what Kiera had done, the FA came out and said

00:24 she hadn't suffered an ACL injury, which is the anterior cruciate ligament in your knee.

00:28 And I think that says a lot about where we are in the women's game right now. The ACL

00:33 injury issue is very much the talk of the game. It is the injury that players fear.

00:38 It is a massive problem. And when Walsh went down, the first thing that everyone thought

00:44 in that stadium in Sydney was she had done her ACL. And thankfully, the good news is

00:50 she hasn't. But it doesn't get away from the fact that for women's football, there is a

00:54 wider problem that they need to sort him. We noticed that after the game when we were

00:57 talking to players, we heard from Rachel Daly who said, 'Don't mention those three letters

01:03 to me. That is what everyone fears.' And it's because it is really as big a problem as it

01:09 is being made out to be. For England, there's no Beth Mead at this World Cup. There's no

01:13 Leah Williamson. But wider than that, it is a really big issue. The Ballon d'Or list for

01:21 the top 20 players in the world last year who were nominated for that award, five out

01:25 of those 20 players picked up ACL injuries. And it is a specific thing to the women's

01:29 game. And this is why there have been calls for more research, more needs to be done.

01:34 And I think that is probably the biggest issue that needs to be addressed. And it's the heart

01:37 of the problem is that we need more research. You speak to anyone in the women's game, they

01:41 say there isn't a clear answer yet as to what the issue is. We know some factors. And they

01:47 really sort of boil down to external and internal, is probably a way of putting it. So in terms

01:52 of the internal, there are certain things with the female body that mean they are more

01:58 at risk of having ACL injuries. And that's just from the anatomy and the physiology of

02:01 where they're made up. Females have wider hips. So it means the angle coming towards

02:06 the knee puts more load on it. And they naturally have more ACL injuries. So that's something

02:11 that in a way you can't really do anything about. That's natural. But there are external

02:17 factors, as they are called, where things that people think we can change. And you look

02:22 at something like the schedule. For these players playing at this World Cup, it's the

02:26 third major tournament in a row. They had the 2021 Olympics. They had the Euros last

02:31 summer. They're now playing the World Cup. Next summer it's Olympics. Summer after that

02:35 it's the Euros. That is a big schedule to be putting on players. It's something they

02:38 have to deal with. But beyond that, we've got factors like pitches that people are looking

02:42 at. We've got talk about boots. There's actually a very interesting study recently from the

02:47 European Club Association, who surveyed a lot of players from Europe's top leagues.

02:52 I think it was over 300 players. And 80% of those, over 80%, said they were in pain when

02:57 they're playing football. Their boots are causing them issues. And big brands are responding.

03:03 Just before this World Cup, Nike brought out their first dedicated football boot for female

03:08 players. Puma have pledged to invest and try and find out why this is an ACL issue. But

03:13 it all boils down to, right now, we don't have a definitive answer to the question.

03:19 Until we get that answer, the calls for something to be done, for people to find a solution,

03:24 are only going to get louder.