GAA pours cold water on ice bath treatments

THERE’S no scientific evidence to support the use of ice baths as an aid to recovery, according to a top GAA medical committee.

The Association’s Medical and Scientific Committee has reported on results of a pilot study on injury data, with leading physiotherapist John Murphy stressing: “The point we are trying to make is that if you get injured, you are injured, and some of those things won’t help you to repair the injury,’’ he said.

Agreeing, Dr Jim Gillespie, who is the Sligo team doctor, said that while ice baths might arrest bleeding, he didn’t believe that they aided recovery “or a rapid recovery”.

Committee chairman Dr Pat Duggan said that in response to player demands “from ice packs to cryotherapy and all this kind of nonsense”, there wasn’t a shred of evidence from a scientific point of view to support their use. In his view, it was time from a GAA perspective that such demands should be resisted.

Dr Duggan, the ex-Dublin team doctor, had some interesting comments to make on the inherent dangers of food supplements and on the potential risk of young GAA players failing drugs tests. He pointed out that it was FIFA who first highlighted the risks associated with buying supplements, 20% being contaminated by steroids.

With Dr Gillespie commenting that the use of creatine was “not that prevalent” in GAA circles, Dr Duggan said that the committee will be addressing this issue over the next year.

“Currently, the Irish Sports Council are looking at the whole area and we did not want to pre-empt that. My own feeling is that whatever about the legality or otherwise of creatine, no medical person could ever recommend children under 18 years of age ever dabbling in it.

“And without a shadow of doubt there is a problem with children under 18 taking creatine, not necessarily within the GAA. But, to me it is a crying shame that creatine is available in outlets and various gyms, so that vulnerable kids have ready access to it.

“We don’t know if creatine does any harm, but for sure it shouldn’t be used by kids under 18. I don’t believe it is a big issue with the under-18’s within the GAA, but if it’s being used by a group in society then it’s not unreasonable to expect that if the rugby jocks are using it, the GAA players are going to start using it at under-age level.”

He was also asked about the possibility of young GAA players failing drug tests through use of recreational drugs. However, he pointed out that this would come under a “different category to steroids”. “Certainly inter-county athletes need to be very careful about their use of recreational drugs.’’

At a more general level, Dr Duggan said he wasn’t surprised that a GAA player had yet to test positive for the use of steroids, since testing was first introduced about five years. “Anecdotally as somebody who would have been involved at various levels for many years, I would never have had any suspicion that there was a huge involvement, certainly in steroid taking.

“At inter-county level the level of awareness among the players of the dangers of over-the-counter drugs would be very strong. Most educated players would realise that it’s potentially lethal. The issue is a contamination of supplements.

“In athletics you’re talking about individuals who may not have as direct a relationship with medics, but every group of inter-county lads will have a team doctor and a team physiotherapist, both of whom can hammer home this message. We’ve been very aware of the dangers right from the very start.’’

John Murphy outlined the results of the pilot study of a GAA national injury database, conducted through five inter-county football and four hurling teams — whereby all injuries and treatments were recorded by the medical and physiotherapy teams of the participating counties and submitted on a weekly basis.

It revealed, for instance that hamstrings are the most common injury (23% in football and 24% in hurling) and that in squads of 32, management could expect 2.4 and 2 new injuries, respectively, per week.

Other key findings are that one in every 6.6 injuries in hurling and one in every 4.2 in football was a recurrent injury, with the hamstring recurrence rate 26% in hurling and 38% for football.

Agreeing that the limiting of recurrent injuries represented a major challenge, he said that what was called for was a more ‘conservative approach’ to a return to sport, post-injury.

“One of the reasons we would have a large recurrence rate and hamstrings specifically is that players expose themselves too quickly in returning to sport,’’ he commented.

Mayo team doctor Sean Moffat released a position statement on concussion in Gaelic games, commenting that it was “poorly understood and poorly publicised”.

He pointed out that concussion was the most common form of head injury. And warned that further injures sustained by players suffering from concussion can be very serious and could cause long-term damage.

Dr Duggan also presented a report on cardiac screening, which showed that the incidence of sudden cardiac deaths in people who compete in sport while under the age of 35 was rare, but that the risk for over-35’s was 40 times greater.