Injury Prevention

The Injured Players Foundation works with a number of partners to produce preventative or promotional resources that could help to reduce rugby related injuries as well as inform future law changes.

We have a number of current research projects including:

Injuries within youth rugby

This study undertaken on our behalf by Bath University is investigating the cause of injuries within youth community and academy rugby to determine if the occurrence and severity etc is comparable between different ages and also levels of participation.

Over 400 players have fully taken part in this study, and we will compare the results with those from studies of injuries in senior professional rugby.

Injury surveillance

A detailed injury surveillance system has been set up to collect injury data from across the community game. This will enable us to monitor trends in injury over time at all levels of the game. This season involves 12 teams, the 09/10 season will collect data from 40 and the numbers of teams involved will increase year on year.

Concussion study

We are supporting a masters research project investigating the awareness of concussion and the guidelines available for the management of this injury. This will inform us if more promotional and educational work is required to ensure players, coaches schools and clubs are fully aware of the signs, symptoms and necessary practice involved with concussion injuries.

CI injury surveillance

We are working with the IRB and other National Governing Bodies to examine catastrophic injuries which occur in Rugby Union throughout the world. By sharing information and resources we can get a much clearer picture of how and why these injuries happen and investigate ways to reduce their ocurrence.

We also work closely with the coaching and refereeing departments amongst others at the RFU to ensure their training courses include the relevant player safety elements.