Medical Team - Update

Reflection on the year

The ETA medical team had a busy year culminating in the medical support for the World Cup in Australia, back in May.

We had a successful year in collaboration with our university partners and the sports scientists from Chester University, led by Craig Twist and Nick Dobbin. The testing of the squads enabled them to provide training programmes that were specific for our World cup campaign to ensure that the players were ready for the challenges in Australia.

In fact our anecdotal evidence suggested that we had a much lower injury incidence in terms of intrinsic (controllable) factors, those associated with poor technique, fatigue and poor muscle control. Most of the injuries documented were extrinsic (external) and related to collisions such as fractures, concussion etc.

What we are doing next

The ETA will now provide medical cover for all NTS/CTS events and therefore it is envisaged that there will be another recruitment drive to ensure that we have a team of physiotherapists to cover all the completions. The core ETA team will continue to cover the elite events/camps. Watch this space for the advertisements!

Following on from this the ETA medical team is going to start running first aid courses for national coaches/referees so that there is a designated first aider at all training sessions.

We have a partnership with a nutritionist from Manchester Metropolitan University in order to provide nutritional support for the elite squads, especially during completion times. We look forward to working with Emilia Thompson and introducing her to the ETA squads.

The research strand of the medical team has been undergoing some development and there are plans to continue looking at the injury surveillance and testing of players including profiling players to look at informing training programmes. There will also be a formalising of partnerships between Manchester Metropolitan, Chester and Bath Universities to ensure good quality research to help develop our players and the sport of touch.

Exciting and busy times ahead!