Blades banned as club bids to eradicate cruciate injuries
April 06, 2011The Irish Independent reports that four players from the club suffered the dreaded cruciate rupture last year, and that new-fangled boots may be to blame.
Club chairman Paddy Boyle told the paper, "We had never seen anything like it before. The only common denominator was that the four lads were wearing blades. So, we've asked the lads to stick to moulded boots or studs."
Cruciate ligament injuries have become a common scenario in GAA circles.
Three Kildare players - including two-time former All Star Dermot Earley - are currently sidelined following cruciate ops, while Kerry's David Moran and Cork star Colm O'Neill ruptured their cruciate ligaments in recent weeks.
Meanwhile, internationally renowned physio Ger Hartmann, who treated Kilkenny's Henry Shefflin and John Tennyson in the build-up to last year's All-Ireland hurling final, insists the injuries themselves have always been prevalent in the GAA, but that better diagnosis and treatment nowadays gives players a chance of making a full recovery.
Quoted in Wednesday's Irish Times, he said, "Go back 10 or 15 years and they'd be depending on an X-ray, but that didn't show a cruciate, which could be torn, or completely gone.
"Now you have an MRI in every hospital, and places like the Santry Clinic, so diagnostics are way more expedient, within days of the trauma. So as Pat Spillane says, cruciate injuries were always there, but players were told the knee was badly inflamed, arthritis even. You played on if you could, and if you couldn't you retired. But these injuries were always there, just not as readily diagnosed." Tweet
