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Correspondence to Professor Keith A Stokes, Department for Health, University of Bath, Bath BA2 7AY, UK; [email protected]
Introduction
Rugby Union (herein referred to as ‘rugby’) is a field-based collision team sport comprising both low-intensity and high-intensity periods of exercise.1 In comparison to other team sports, the incidence and severity of injury in professional rugby is relatively high (83/1000 hours2 and 37 days per injury,3 respectively). The majority of previous injury surveillance studies in professional club rugby have been limited to one or two seasons3–5; Schwellnus et al 6 reported on five seasons of data. Multiple season, league-wide data are of substantially greater benefit, allowing injury trends to be examined as well as providing a larger sample size to give greater confidence in the data (especially when breaking injuries down into smaller injury categories). We aimed to examine match injuries in professional rugby over the period 2002–2019 and to describe trends in injuries over this period.
Methods
Participants
In the 2002/2003–2018/2019 seasons (August to June), a mean of 576 (SD:98, range: 413–763) players consented to participate in the study per season, with a total of 9213 player-seasons (3006 unique players). Data were collected from the 16 clubs (12 per season) in the top tier of English rugby with a mean squad size for the period of 48 players per season (range: 34 (2002/2003 season) to 64 (2018/2019 season)). Match exposure and injury data were recorded daily by club conditioning and medical staff as part of the Professional Rugby Injury Surveillance Project (which is mandated for all teams playing in the competition) and includes all match injuries from the Premiership, the National Cup and European Cups. Each team played 22 Premiership games each year with four teams involved in semi-finals and two in the final, while European and National Cup exposure was based on the success of English teams in those competitions. Individual informed consent was obtained from first-team eligible players on a yearly basis.
Procedures
From 2002/2003 to 2012/2013, data were collected using a paper-based format and then entered into a database at the host institution.7 From the 2013/2014 season, injury data were captured directly from the injury surveillance section of an online clinical electronic medical record keeping system,...