Sport And Exercise Psychology: A Critical Introduction

Box 9.3 Yes, it really happened!...unusual causes of injury in soccer

and rugby

Athletic injuries are not always incurred on the sports field. To illustrate this point, here
are some unusual causes of injury in soccer and rugby (Hannigan, 2001b; M.Smith,
2002a).

• Kieran Durkan (Rochdale) suffered blisters in his groin area when a team-mate
  inadvertently spilt a mug of coffee over him.


• Peter Canero (Kilmarnock) received cuts on his arms and legs when he fell through a
  glass-cased gaming machine in Spain,


• Florentin Petre (Dinamo Bucharest) experienced a nasty electric shock and burns to his
  head and body when his fishing rod became entangled in a power cable.


• Stefan Hampl, a striker with German third-division team Burghausen, was training with
  his team-mates in Cyprus when his ring-finger got caught in the nets of a goal-post he
  was carrying. This finger on his left hand was completely torn off and had to be
  reattached in hospital!


• Matt Rogers (of rugby union’s New South Wales Waratahs)—and a former Australian
  rugby league star—incurred a freak injury when the massage table on which he was
  lying collapsed and crushed the middle finger of his right hand.

contrast with safer pursuits like tennis), methods of training undertaken, typical
environment in which the sport is played and the nature and amount of protective
equipment used. By contrast, the intrinsic factors include personal characteristics of the
participants such as age, gender and possible abnormalities of physical maturation. To
illustrate this last-mentioned problem, Keith O’Neill, the former Republic of Ireland
soccer international player, suffered chronic injuries due to a spurt of rapid growth in
adolescence—a problem which caused pelvic and back complications (Fitzmaurice,
2002). Other intrinsic injury determinants include a previous history of physical injury
and a vulnerability to stress. Interestingly, the idea that psychosocial factors could serve
as antecedents of athletic injury comes from the research of Holmes and Rahe (1967).
Briefly, these investigators found that people who had experienced stressful life events
were more likely to suffer adverse health subsequently than were those who had
experienced less stress in their lives. Evidence to support this theory in sport comes from
the fact that injured athletes tend to have experienced higher levels of stress during the
year preceding their injury than have athletes who had not been injured (Cryan and Alles,
1983). Such research has been criticised by Petrie and Falkstein (1998), however, for its
reliance on subjective reports of injury severity and also for failing to consider the
possible influence of intervening variables such as the social support mechanisms
available to the injured athletes. Nevertheless, in a review of research in this field, J.M.
Williams and Roepke (1993) concluded that eighteen out of twenty studies had found a
significant positive relationship between stress and injury in athletes. In the light of such
conclusions, let us now explore the psychological significance of athletes’ reactions to
the injuries that they experience.

Sport and exercise psychology: A critical introduction 250