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Original Articles

Mechanisms of anterior cruciate ligament injuries in elite women’s netball: a systematic video analysis

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Pages 1516-1522 | Accepted 12 Nov 2015, Published online: 08 Dec 2015
 

ABSTRACT

This study involved a systematic video analysis of 16 anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injuries sustained by elite-level netball players during televised games in order to describe the game situation, the movement patterns involved, the player’s behaviour, and a potential injury mechanism. Eight of the ACL injuries were classified as “indirect contact” and eight as “non-contact”. Two common scenarios were identified. In Scenario A the player was jumping to receive or intercept a pass and whilst competing for the ball experienced a perturbation in the air. As a result the player’s landing was unbalanced with loading occurring predominantly on the knee of the injured side. In Scenario B the player was generally in a good position at ground contact, but then noticeably altered the alignment of the trunk before the landing was completed. This involved rotating and laterally flexing the trunk without altering the alignment of the feet. Apparent knee valgus collapse on the knee of the injured side was observed in 3/6 Scenario A cases and 5/6 Scenario B cases. Players may benefit from landing training programmes that incorporate tasks that use a ball and include decision-making components or require players to learn to cope with being unbalanced.

Acknowledgements

The authors are very grateful to Channel 10/One HD, Sky New Zealand, Gary Dawson, and Mitchell Mooney for providing video footage, and Netball Australia for allowing use of the footage to construct image sequences.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

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