Knees, knees, knees, knees.
Round One of 2008 of the Australian Football League has not yet even began and there have been a number of footballers ruled out for the rest of the season due to injuring their ACL. Mitch Brown (West Coast), Paul Haselby (Fremantle), Nick Malceski (Sydney), Brad Dick (Collingwood), and now Beau Muston (Hawthorn) to name a few, have all fallen victim to the dreaded ACL injury.
In some cases it is their first knee injury (Mitch Brown), but in the case of Beau Muston it is a repeat of the same injury two years ago. Although it is possible to make a comeback after re injuring the knee (e.g Richard Hadlee of the Brisbane Lions), it can be a career ending injury. Most players that do return after such a serious injury are never the player they once were, whether this is due to the psychological or physical damage or a combination of both.
So what is an A.C.L you may ask? The Anterior Cruciate Ligament is a small piece of connective tissue that provides stability for the knee, mainly stopping the top half of the knee slipping forward. It runs diagonally through the knee joint, joined from the Femur (thigh bone) to the Tibia (shin bone).This ligament usually gets fully torn when a player hyper extends their knee in a collision or in awkward twisting motions. People talk of hearing a ‘pop’ when injurying the ACL, but from personal experience the knee collapses in a crunch and you do feel like you’ve broken your knee and you know its not bone.
The problem is that not much has changed in the diagnosis, prevention or recovery of this injury in the past decade or so. Mitch Brown when playing, felt his knee hyper extend but got it strapped and kept playing. The next day he couldnt get out of bed. Some players like Nick Malceski, totally collapse under the weight of their knee buckling. So, there are different degrees of severity in damaging the ACL. Sometimes it can just be a clean break of the ACL, but when the knee does slide forward after tearing, it can damage the cartilage and meniscus surrounding the knee and even tear the other stabilising ligament, the PCL (posterior cruciate ligament).
The only difference between a person like Paul Haselby and another AFL player who goes their whole career without injurying their knee, is cold hard luck. You can be fit, young, done a full pre season, no medical history of weakness in the knee and still end up with an ACL tear. The game makes you play Russian roulette with your body because you are having to constantly place your body in extreme physical positions which aren’t natural. And by design the ligaments in the knee cannot withstand this pressure. Surgery seems to be the only solution to repairing the ACL and even this can be unsuccessful as the graft may not take.
As the game is getting faster and pre seasons longer, there seems to be an increase in the occurance of ACL injuries. Is it just an accepted fact now that a career ending injury like the ACL is just part of the game. Or can something be done more by the AFL and the medical institutions to limit the effect this injury is having on our game, Aussie Rules?
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March 5th, 2008 at 9:09 am
Thanks for that johnnytruent and I look forward in hearing more about your own experiences…
In regards to players who have made it back from multiple knees, so many people have really struggled after. Hadlee has struggled and other players like Reed, Morrison, McDonald and Darcy (to name a few) never reached the same heights as they did before there multiple operations.
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