Objectives: To undertake a retrospective audit of the injuries sustained by youth footballer players over the 17/18 and 18/19 seasons in order to identify the most common injuries and trends associated with them.
Methods: An injury reports was created from the clubs Performance Management Application detailing the injury type, location, injury and return date, and age group. The output was then further sorted into severity and month and an exact chi-square test was run, using the monte-carlo estimates of p-value. Seasonal distribution was run using an exact chi-square goodness of fit using the monte-carlo estimates of p-value.
Results: One hundred and sixty injuries were analysed. The injury rate for the 17/18 season was 0.85 and 0.90 for the 18/19 season. The under (U)12s experienced the most injuries (32); the U18s the fewest (12). The most common injury location was to the thigh (17.58%) and the most common injury type was a strain(20.00%). There was a significant difference in the rate of injuries found per month (χ2 =26.67, p 0.003), with the biggest spike in injuries in April and the lowest in May. Moderate injury was the most common severity of injury (40.61%)
Conclusions: Strains and injuries to the thigh have been regarded as the most common location across many publications, yet they still remain in place. Injuries to youth footballers may affect not only their