At a media briefing in Croke Park the GAA’s Medical Scientific and Welfare Committee (MSW) released information on a number of issues of relevance to the Association, as follows:

GAA INJURY DATABASE

The Committee presented the main findings from the latest report of the GAA’s Injury Database. The database, now in its ninth year monitors injury data collected from the senior Inter-County playing population. Latest data available suggests that players are considerably more likely to sustain an injury when playing games as opposed to when training at inter-county level.

Additional findings include that:

• Lower limb injuries account for nearly 80% of all injuries recorded in football and 70% of all injuries recorded in Hurling.
• 14% of all football injuries are “overuse” injuries; the corresponding figure for hurling is only 6.6%
• Recurrent cases accounted for 24% of all injuries in football, 19% in hurling
• Most injuries in Gaelic Games are non-contact injuries. Only 28% of injuries were reported as having occurred following contact with another player in football. This figure was 36% for hurling.

Chairman of the MSW Committee, Ger Ryan, said that the findings were of considerable interest and thanked Mr John Murphy and Dr Catherine Blake (Directors) and their team at UCD for preparing the initial findings. He said the high instance of lower limb injuries further emphasised the importance to the GAA of the effective roll out of its GAA 15 injury prevention warm up programme which is currently ongoing.

He said the high rate of overuse injuries in football, compared to hurling, was significant in the debate on overtraining and player burnout. The initial findings also showed that while the risk of injury increased sequentially with age in hurling, players exiting U21 grade (those in the 21 – 24 year age bracket) were at the highest risk of sustaining an injury in Gaelic football.

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CONCUSSION

Arising from a motion to the 2015 GAA Annual Congress, the MSW committee were requested to consider the implications of introducing a temporary substitute in Gaelic Games for players suspected of having concussion. Dr Kevin Moran said that having given the matter detailed consideration, the MSW committee would not be recommending the introduction of a “concussion sub” in Gaelic Games at this point.

• Medical, Scientific and Welfare Committee Recommendation re: Concussion Substitute Proposal
  

He said it was the view of the Committee that the current Concussion guidelines were the best approach for the Association and that the focus of the Association should be on the continued education of its players and members in this regard.

Dr Moran stated “Our management guidelines are clear in the view that if there is any doubt at all as to whether a concussion has been sustained, a player should be removed from play; we are not convinced that allowing time for side-line assessment will necessarily help in this regard as there is no test currently available that ensures accuracy for pitch side concussion assessment”.

He said “proposals to introduce a concussion sub presume that concussion can be diagnosed within a short time frame but that this was not in keeping with best practice and that symptoms of concussion can take several hours to present”. He concluded by saying that while concussion in Gaelic games is not at levels to cause any huge concern if improperly managed, concussion could represent a serious risk to players’ future health.

The MSW’s full position on the matter was articulated in a separate document, available here.