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The English Institute of
Sport (EIS) in the form of Martin Morton, Lynn Booth, Jeff Stimpson and
Clare Pheasey has been a tremendous benefit to the Rugby Football League
(RFL) for the following reasons: -
It has enabled a
comprehensive screening protocol to be outlined with a continuing plan,
which already has had excellent results in our Development and
Performance Players. Unfortunately we have not yet been able to initiate
an adequate screening protocol for our national players but this is in
the pipeline for 2002.
The comprehensive screening
protocol included:
Medical
screening via Doctor (guidelines from the RFL’s Head of Sports
Medicine)
Musculoskeletal
profile by Physiotherapist (guideline RFL’s Head Sports Medicine)
12
lead Electrocardiogram (ECG) provided by Cardiac Risk in the Young (CRY)
Echocardiogram
(ECHO) provided by CRY
Other services provided was
Sports Medicine testing at Liverpool John Moore’s University. Whilst
the facilities there and the staff present were excellent we were
unfortunately not able to get the number of players there that we would
have liked. The latter is a result of the players belonging to clubs
rather than to the RFL itself. It is hoped that in future such tests can
be carried out on internationally selected players pre-season and this
will be discussed with the EIS at a later date.
The screening for the U13,
14 & 15 development and performance players however were very well
co-ordinated and executed. The RFL provided 2 Dr’s who worked half day
each on each screening occasion (2 full Saturdays in total) who
completed part of the Dr screening on day 1 and the U14 ECG’s on day
2. The RFL also provided 3 Physio’s (funded by the EIS) on day 1 and 2
Physios on day 2. The EIS provided a further full time Dr on Day 1 plus
2 other full time Drs on day 2 and a further 4 Physio’s on day 2. The
EIS also arranged for Cardiac Risk in the Young (CRY) to attend on day 1
to screen 54 U15 players with a full ECG and ECHO.
The CRY team was excellent.
The communication with them before, during and after the event has been
first class as with all EIS communication with the above named people.
The screening days (day 1
Red Hall, day 2 South Leeds Stadium – venues provided by RFL)
consisted of 54 players on day 1 and 108 players on day 2! A mammoth
task but which actually went like clockwork. I think my PA will state
that arranging all the appointments so that they were well co-ordinated
was a nightmare, however her work was well rewarded by the fact that the
days ran smoothly.
The benefits to the RFL have
been numerous. As Head of Sports Medicine I have had to carry out the
screening on my own with the 2 RFL Dr’s in the past and it has been
unbelievably hard. This year with the EIS’s help it ran professionally
and shows the true meaning of what I believe we are aiming for in
“world class sports”.
It has allowed us to further
our information on junior players and for those junior players to
envisage what furthering their talents and careers involves by seeing
the older players having additional investigative tests
The
U13’s
had a screen by the Dr and a profile by the Physio
The
U14’s
had a screen by the Dr and a profile by the Physio + a 12 lead ECG
The
U15’s
had a screen by the Dr and a profile by the Physio + a 12 lead ECG &
ECHO.
Our plan is to repeat these
investigations on a yearly basis so that by the time the players are 15
they have had all the investigations and the RFL have on file annual
data on how each and every player is developing.
It is envisaged that the
program will continue into our U16 Combined Youth and U18 Academy and up
into our U21 and GB National Senior side. The latter will hopefully also
include sports science testing as provided by the LJMU.
The EIS have further helped
during the development & performance camps themselves by providing
sports science students to assist every morning with tests of the
players consisting of height, weight and body fat measures which are
also essential to our medical monitoring protocol.
The
success stories of screening
At the RFL screening we were
able to investigate an academy player with a history of Wolfe Parkinson
White Syndrome that had not been followed through. We had to rely on the
club and its medical staff to onwardly refer this player. Which they did
and the success story is he went onto have surgery and indeed recovered
so well that he attended the academy tour to Australia and New Zealand
in 2001.
With the help of the EIS and
the CRY team we have this year identified a young player with a heart
murmur and Arythmogenic Right Ventricular Cardiomyopathy (which is the
second most commonest cause of sudden death in Europe in young
athletes). He is currently undergoing further investigations.
These two anecdotes, whilst
they do not add up to a substantial evidence base, do however highlight
the importance of what we are trying to do with screening and could be 2
lives that have been saved by the World Class Plan.
I hope for the future we can
continue with this relationship and that monies are available so that
this program can be instigated year after year so that databases are
built up on our players, that guidelines can be implemented and future
athletes see the profiles they have to aim to (via medical and sports
science databases and profiling) to become World Class performers.
Whilst also at the same time we as medics care for the safety of our
players and of our sport by the medical screening we provide.
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