TRIP

Maturity status and injury risk in youth soccer players.

Clinical Journal of Sport Medicine, 2010

Comment on: OBJECTIVE: To investigate the association of relative skeletal age and other risk factors with injury in elite schoolboy footballers (soccer players).
At intake, the boys were medically screened to ensure they could be fully involved in the training and games program.
ASSESSMENT OF RISK FACTORS: Each year consenting players had a radiograph of the left wrist and hand for the assessment of skeletal age (SA), using the Fels method.
Eighty-five players had at least 1 radiograph and 12 players had 6 radiographs, 1 in each year of the study.
Early and late maturers were those with an SA >1 year older or younger, respectively, than their chronologic age (CA).
Information on demographics, height and weight, playing and training times, and position played was collected.
MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: The main outcome measure was the relation of maturity status to the occurrence of injuries.
MAIN RESULTS: For the total sample across all the age groups the incidence of injuries was 1.44 per 1000 hours of training (n = 244 injuries), and 10.5 per 1000 match hours (n = 169 injuries).
The mean number of injuries per season was 79.3, with a mean loss of 12.5 injury days per player per season.
Injury incidence did not differ significantly among late, normal, and early maturing players (1.4, 1.5, and 1.8, respectively) when training time, playing time, height, and playing position were statistically controlled as covariates (P = 0.73).