Epidemiology of Injuries Sustained by Elite Under-18 Rugby Players.

Context: The physical nature of rugby is responsible for the high incidence of injuries, but no researchers have examined the epidemiology of injuries sustained by elite under-18 rugby players.

Objective: To investigate the incidence of injuries sustained by players on the Spanish national under-18 rugby team during their participation in 4 European championships (2014-2017) and the types of play in which they occurred.

Design: Cohort study.

Setting: European rugby championships.

Patients Or Other Participants: Ninety-eight under-18 rugby players.

Main Outcome Measure(s): All injuries sustained during the championship periods were recorded per the World Rugby protocol.

Results: A total of 40 injuries were logged over the 4 championships. The incidence of injury was higher during matches than during training ( < .05), with 138.0 (95% confidence interval [CI] = 136.5, 139.6) injuries per 1000 hours of play compared with 1.2 (95% CI = 1.2, 1.3) per 1000 hours of training. With only 2 days of rest between games, the injury rate was higher than with 3 days of rest ( < .05). More injuries were sustained during the third quarter of the game: 13 (44.8%) versus 6 (20.6%) in the last quarter, 5 (17.3%) in the second quarter, and 5 (17.3%) in the first quarter.

Conclusions: The most common injuries during matches were sprains and concussions, and these injuries were more likely to occur during matches than during training. Most injuries were caused by tackles and occurred during the third quarter of the game. These findings indicate that teams should focus on teaching players skills to reduce injuries caused by tackles and warming up properly before returning to the field after halftime. The injury rate was higher with only 2 versus 3 days' rest between games. These results suggest that young players' matches should be at least 72 hours apart.