‘Most people would prefer an operation than four months in rehab’

Anyone picking up a newspaper recently has seen that GAA players seem to be undergoing hip operations more often now than ever before.

Dr Eanna Falvey, of the Sports Surgery Clinic and the IRFU, warns, however, that surgery may not be the silver bullet that will solve every problem in this area.

“There are a couple of factors here,” he says. “In 2005 I was asked to review an elite intercounty player and we diagnosed hip impingement — basically he’d had groin trouble for years — but there was no-one to operate on him in Ireland at the time.