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Background Injury research in rugby league predominantly focuses on match-injuries. Yet players spend a larger proportion of their time training, which is a more controllable environment with scope to implement injury prevention interventions. Objective Report two-years of detailed training injury data from injury surveillance in senior and academy professional rugby league. Design Prospective cohort study Setting Elite senior and academy rugby league Participants 224,000 exposure hours from 96% and 83% of senior and academy male teams during 2021 and 2022. Assessment of Risk Factors Independent variables were level (senior, academy) and the characteristic or mechanism. Main Outcome Measurements Time loss injury data and exposure data were collected for all training and matches. Injury incidence, severity and burden were calculated. Results Training injury incidences were 3 (2–3) and 2 (2–3) per 1000 training-hrs at senior and academy levels, accounting for 31% (senior) and 40% (academy) of all injuries, when considering match injury data. Lower-limb injuries had the greatest injury incidence at both levels of competition (senior: 1.85 1.61–2.12 per 1000 training-hrs, academy: 1.28 1.08–1.51 per 1000 training-hrs). Head injuries at the academy level had greater severity (0.49 0.37–0.64 vs. 0.25 0.17–0.37 per 1000 training-hrs pConclusions Training injuries accounted about a third of injuries, with a higher rate of non-contact vs. contact injuries. Whilst current injury prevention interventions target matches, these data highlight the importance of collecting high quality training injury data to develop and evaluate injury prevention strategies in training.
Whitehead et al. (Fri,) studied this question.
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