Non-contact lower limb injuries in Rugby Union: A two-year pattern recognition analysis of injury risk factors.

The cause of sport injuries are multifactorial and necessitate sophisticated statistical approaches for accurate identification of risk factors predisposing athletes to injury. Pattern recognition analyses have been adopted across sporting disciplines due to their ability to account for repeated measures and non-linear interactions of datasets, however there are limited examples of their use in injury risk prediction. This study incorporated two-years of rigorous monitoring of athletes with 1740 individual weekly data points across domains of training load, performance testing, musculoskeletal screening, and injury history parameters, to be one of the first to employ a pattern recognition approach to predict the risk factors of specific non-contact lower limb injuries in Rugby Union.

Noncontact Injury Distribution and Relationship With Preseason Training Load and Nonmodifiable Risk Factors in Rugby Union Players Across Multiple Seasons.

Evans, SL, Whittaker, G, Elphinstone Davis, E, Jones, ES, Hardy, J, and Owen, JA. Noncontact injury distribution and relationship with preseason training load and non-modifiable risk factors in Rugby Union players across multiple seasons. J Strength Cond Res 37(7): 1456-1462, 2023-This study examined the distribution of noncontact injury during phases of the competitive season and the association between preseason training load (TL) and nonmodifiable risk factors on injury risk during these phases.