An Overview of Injuries in Senior Women’s Football in Malta

Abstract

The incidence of football injuries may be double the amount of injuries happening in sports such as basketball, and is estimated to range from 10 to 35 injuries per 1000 game hours. This high risk of injuries in football is evident in professional, amateur and recreational levels. Despite the significant increase in female participation as well as the well-known injury risks, research on women football players is very limited as most studies are still focusing on injuries experienced by the male gender . Considering the gap existing in the field of applied research, this study has explored the rate of injuries in senior Women football players in Malta. It has also looked at the underlying causes of these injuries during the 2018/2019 season. Ethical clearance was obtained from the Ethics Board within the Malta College of Arts Science and Technology, and permission was granted by the Malta Football Association. The sample was made up of 100 participants from 111 players over 16 years of age, within the 120 entire population of senior women football players in Malta. Data was collected through a self-designed online questionnaire which was first validated by three field professionals and then distributed to the participants. Statistical tests (inferential statistics) were used to identify relationships between variables. The Pearson correlation test was utilised to measure the existence and strength of a linear relationship between two variables. The study found that during the 2018/2019 season, in the BOV Women’s League in football, 63% of the players reported to have suffered at least one injury. With 88.89% of the strikers being injured, this position was seemingly, the one putting players at the highest risk for injury. While it was clear that the majority of injuries occurred during games (53.5%), the knee (35.3%) and ankle (34.1%) were the body part mostly injured, and ligament sprains (60.4%) were the highest type of injuries. The results of this study, contradict existing literature, and found that a negative coefficient with a weak correlation was obtained for both age (r = -0.098) and mass (r = -0.043) when correlated to the number of injuries.