RFU Community Update: June 2019
As part of RugbySafe, ongoing research into the number and types of injuries sustained across school rugby and the men’s community game is being independently conducted by a team at the University of Bath.
The Youth Rugby Injury Surveillance Project (YRISP) has been running since 2013, while the men’s community rugby injury surveillance and prevention (CRISP) project has been running every season since 2009. The primary aim of both projects is to monitor the rates and types of injury at these levels of the game, while asking additional questions about causes of injury and what measures can be put in place to reduce the risk.
Work from the projects showed that specific warm-up programmes could help to reduce concussion and lower limb injuries. This has resulted in the Activate programme which is now freely available for anyone to access via the Activate webpage and use with their team.
The team are currently working on exciting new projects, using match video analysis to understand more about how match events differ between playing levels and which type of tackle characteristics are more likely to lead to injuries. There will also be a focus on how teams are using the Activate programme so that future guidelines and resources can be optimised. In the men’s community game, there will be a continued emphasis on understanding more about injuries sustained on Artificial Grass Pitches (AGPs) and natural grass surfaces.
Looking forward to season 2019-20, the YRISP and CRISP projects will continue to monitor the injury risk at different levels of the game from Schools U12 through to U18 age groups in both 15 and 7-a-side rugby and across all levels of the men’s community game. There are opportunities for teams at these levels to get involved in these research projects. By taking part, each team will be better able to track and understand their injury profile compared with the national average for teams at the same age or playing level and will receive a “supporting the RFU to put player welfare at the heart of the game” logo to display on the school/club website.
If you are interested in these projects and would like your team to take part, the research team would be happy to explain more.
Results and resources related to the projects, including 2017-18 season reports are available on the RugbySafe webpage.
For further information, please contact Matt Hancock and Craig Barden: rfu-youth@bath.ac.uk regarding youths and Simon Roberts: rfu-crisp@bath.ac.uk for men's community.
As part of the RugbySafe campaign, the RFU has worked with leading mental health charity Mind to provide generic information and guidance on mental health which will be available from July onwards and can be accessed from the RugbySafe homepage.
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