Project ACL: WSL clubs to take part in pioneering injuries research project

Arsenal’s Leah Williamson missed last year’s World Cup with a debilitating ACL injury. Photograph: Bradley Collyer/PA

Women’s Super League clubs are to be the subject of a three-year research initiative designed to find ways of reducing the incidence of anterior cruciate ligament injuries.

Although such knee ligament tears and ruptures afflict male as well as well as female footballers, they are between two and six times more likely to occur in women than men.

Project ACL, a collaboration between the international players’ union Fifpro, England’s Professional Footballers’ Association, Nike and Leeds Beckett University has been launched with the intention of applying its findings across the women’s game globally.

A project supported by the England and Barcelona right-back Lucy Bronze and the former England striker Ellen White will involve a review of academic research relating to ACL injuries in professional women’s football and injury reduction programmes. This will prompt a simultaneous assessment of WSL clubs’ resources and the extent of players’ access to sports science and sports medicine expertise.

WSL players’ training, playing and travel demands will be recorded through the Fifpro workload monitoring tool. The majority of previous research has centred on amateur female footballers.

“The players have rightly called for more research into ACL injury,” said Dr Alex Culvin, Fifpro’s head of strategy and research for women’s football. “Project ACL is a response to both their needs and those of the industry more broadly. What makes this project stand out is it focuses on professional women’s football and benefits from the collaboration of a wide range of stakeholders.”

Mateta Molango, the PFA’s chief executive, said: “This project marks a significant step towards building player-generated insights into how to best protect players from ACL injury.”