How Much Do Injuries Affect Athletic Performance?

Breaking Point, and Beyond

Having sustained my fair share of serious injuries, I’ve often had to answer the question “How much more do you think you can take?” And most often, I’m the one doing the asking. Career-threatening knocks cause as much mental trauma as physical pain, and any problem-prone player shudders at the thought of spending a single second back in the physio room; a place that sends the same foreboding feel shivering down soccer-players spines than another confined four-wall space does for cognizant criminals.

The dreaded doom of the physio room

Soccer has become so athletic and explosive that players are putting so much stress on their joints through contorting their body at high speeds, and sooner or later, something is going to snap. Hamstrings and quadriceps often bear the brunt of the high-tempo twisting and turning, but why didn’t we see stars back in the “good-ole-days” of mustache-bearing, chest-high shorts-wearing ball-players going down like they’d been shot with a sniper rifle?

Click this link to watch Liverpool’s Steve McMahon shrug off a vintage Vinny Jones leg-breaker in the 1988 FA Cup final!

Unlike many of the players today, instead of tumbling on the ground and rolling around like a gymnast commencing a floor routine, they just picked themselves up and got on with it. And athletic trainers or physiotherapists who dared dangle a concerned toe over the touch-line were dealt a deadly “don’t you dare” stare – even a quick scrub of the magic sponge would be perceived as a sign of weakness. So were players just made of tougher stuff back then, or could the changes in the game hold some insight?

Famed for some of the most X-Rated tackles and tasches of the ’80s, Graeme “Super Souey” Souness had a propensity for violence that matched his skill for dictating matches

It could, in fact, be a mixture of both. The soccer fields of 2016 are a much more placid place than back when ‘Bites Yer Legs’, ‘Chopper’ and ‘Psycho’ roamed them, and thankfully Vinnie Jones-esque hip-high hacks are a thing of the past. But though the Wimbledon warrior would undoubtedly win almost every 50-50 challenge he’d contest if he competed today, it’s highly unlikely he would even get close to clinging onto the shirt-tails of his fleeter-footed, modern-day counterparts. The step-up in speed, stamina and arguably skill since the days of the deadly soccer-playing dinosaurs would surely tell, and though that has made for a more entertaining spectacle for the fans and a safer game in terms of tackling for the players, it has not led to the extinction of injuries.

The introduction of better strength and conditioning coaches and the discovery of improved training methods have helped to keep todays population of the soccersphere relatively healthy, but there hasn’t always been a team of medically-trained tacticians on hand to mollycoddle the “overpaid prima donnas.” Back before the invention of physiotherapists, fitness coaches, and indeed even the color camera, Manchester City’s 1956 FA Cup final winning German goalkeeper Bert Trautmann was forced to cut his celebrations short and pose for a black-and-white photo with more sinister undertones.

Opposing forward Peter Murphy proved to be a pain in Trautmann’s neck in more ways than one that day, in particular after the pair collided with 17 minutes of the match left. The clash resulted in the fracturing of several of the brave Bremenite’s cervical vertebrae, yet unaware of the gravity of the injury, he played the rest of the match, which City won 3-1; bizarrely the goal he conceded was with all of his vertebrae still intact! I wonder what the sturdy shot-stopper would have to say about some of todays supposedly spineless superstars.

Bert puts his head in where it hurts

But nowadays, soccer players aren’t commonly sidelined for having brittle backbones. In fact, in many modern-day injury cases, there often isn’t a culprit to pin the cruel crime on. I, for instance, ruptured my anterior cruciate ligament and medial collateral ligament, as well as damaging both medial and lateral menisci, in an innocuous looking challenge almost seven years ago, but I can’t place the blame on anybody or anything, except perhaps bad luck. My blades planted in the turf at the wrong angle, whilst I was travelling at the right speed, which concluded in the twisting of my kneecap from front to back, synonymously signalling the turning point of my promising career.

Click this link to watch a video showing a medically accurate visualization of what happens inside the knee during an ACL tear.

The problem with a knee injury of such magnitude is that there are so many other elements that are dependent on the joint working properly, and the knock-on effects mean I’m still feeling the repercussions almost a decade down the line. Once something so functionally crucial to physical movement breaks down, the surrounding ligaments, tendons and muscles are strained to compensate for the weak-link, and that can bring about a whole host of problems, as I well know. ACL tears can, and often do, open up a cruel, correlating can of worms.

As a result of the rupture, I tore my right rectus femoris (quadricep muscle) a few years later, with two impressive lumps protruding out of my thigh to act as props for the fabricated stories to tell the grand-kids. Last year I fell victim to a triple-tear in my hip cartilage, and whilst I can’t claim it to be undeniably and directly linked to the injuries succeeding it, it’s interesting to note that the bulk of the damage was done on my ill-fated right side. Rather than coincidence, I believe it to be more of a consequence.

The swollen, bruised and bloody aftermath of my second serious knee operation

But things could always be worse: I’m still (for the time being) able to play, run and (very occasionally) score, even though prior to the ACL operation I was warned that due to the severity of the injury there was a risk I’d never step foot on a soccer field again. Those are tough words to hear at any stage in life, never mind on the brink of your 18th birthday, but after repeatedly defying the physiotherapists doubts (and admittedly, at times, the doctors orders), I marked my comeback with a goal a couple of weeks before entering my last year as a teenager.

The injury, however, has without doubt taken its toll, and it has been a constant battle ever since to regain my physical and psychological strength. An ACL tear is as violent and visceral as a sports injury gets, but so much of the recovery is emotional, especially if it puts a sudden halt to a dream. Part of me reluctantly concedes that it’s probable I’ll never get back to where I was, physically, literally and figuratively speaking, but there are plenty of success stories that shimmer a glimmer of hope. Manchester United’s former striker, dubbed the Dutch Destroyer, a case in point.

Just when it looked all set for Ruud van Nistelrooy to complete a then record-breaking move to Manchester United from PSV Eindhoven in the summer of 2000, he ruptured his ACL in post-season training and the move was axed. The Red Devils promptly cancelled the £18.5 million deal, but returned for Ruud a year later after he had completed his rehabilitation. After passing his medical at Old Trafford in a transfer priced at £500,000 more than the clubs had originally agreed, the fearsome forward went on to more than prove his price-tag, writing his name into the hearts of the Stretford enders as well as the clubs history books by becoming their 11th highest scoring player ever.

Alex Ferguson’s high-flying forward, Van The Man

The main complication with an ACL reconstruction is the presumed loss of pace and power, and that could hold the key as to why van Nistelrooy was seemingly undeterred by the injury, as he never really relied on either. It will, however, be interesting to see how Arsenal speedster Theo Walcott gets on after recently making his return from the very same suffering, but he at least he had former teammate and notorious sick-note specialist Abou Diaby in whom he could seek solace in the early days of his rehab.

The luckless Frenchman left the Gunners at the start of the European soccer season after the club decided not to renew his contract – after nine long years consisting of 40 lengthy injuries. Plagued with pain throughout his playing career, he was the club’s longest-serving first-team player alongside Tomas Rosicky up until the end of the 2014/15 campaign, though on his way to becoming practically part of the furniture at the Emirates, he only made a measly 124 appearances, with his checkered injury record dating back to a horrifying broken leg he suffered after a tackle from Sunderland’s Dan Smith in 2006.

And this is just his list up to March 2013!

Regardless, there comes a point where a player must hold up their hands and accept that enough is enough – and even if their mind doesn’t agree, then their aching bodies will. Many players have been prematurely forced out of “the beautiful game” in unglamorous ways, and ex-England forward Dean Ashton who, just three weeks after his 26th birthday, reluctantly hung up his boots and announced his retirement after failing to recover from an ankle injury sustained during his first England call-up, serves as a chilling reminder of the dark side of a soccer player’s dream.

Although there isn’t always a definitive cause for a career-threatening injury, there is always, without doubt, an effect. No soccer-loving player would willingly turn their back on the sport, even if it had betrayed them in such a cruel fashion. Were constantly reminded to to play every game as if it’s our last, knowing that one day it will be. Unfortunately for Ashton and millions of unfortunate others like him, that game came and went much sooner than they would have liked.