Pink eye
Paddy Lewis
Because our second tier rugby players in this year’s national provincial championship are having to play games in a short turnaround time our Editor asked me what I thought about the potential for more injuries.
I thought it might make a nice change from the usual extracting the Michael and/or ranting that I thrive on. You know, a kind of pseudo-scientific indepth look at how a high impact sport deals with a short recovery span. Unfortunately it is anything but. My wide range of sports medicine contacts ended up making me, in general terms, snort coffee out of my nose.
The long and the short of it is that players are being managed to the nth degree in the national provincial championship, and bigger squads mean potential injuries are covered by the increased depth in the squads. This depth isn’t as deep as it could be in some cases, which explains why we see some teams over-perform one day and then do not so well a few short days later.
Anyway, the physios and doctors I talked to completely blew the Editor’s idea out of the water and reduced this to just another Michael extraction. It appears the hardest aspect of managing injuries and potential injuries in semi-professional rugby teams is not laughing at the more bizarre aspects.
One physio told me of a burly loosie who presented last year with an incredible pain in his left buttock. It sent terrible pains down his leg and was affecting his standing, walking, et cetera. After much palpitation of said buttock, head scratching over sciatica and lots of bad language from said loosie, a scan was ordered which showed a large piece of darning needle causing problems.
This, via a process of elimination, had apparently been there since a fight in home economics went horribly wrong in Year Seven. It seemed the muscle-building requirements of modern loose forward play had shifted the remains of the needle to one of the gluteal nerves 10 years later. A small operation removed the needle and allowed the loosie in question to have an entirely forgettable career at the top level.
Another physio had a more disturbing experience. A player turned up complaining of thigh tightness. The physio (a male) asked him to strip down to his jocks. This normally would not have presented a problem, other than that the player in question was wearing (and I quote) “a red satin G-banger with a yellow love heart on the….ahem, front”. For those not sure what a G-banger is, I believe the common term (being a boxer shorts man myself) is G-string or thong.
Physiotherapists are nothing if not professional but this was almost beyond the pale for this poor chap. He asked one of his colleagues to treat the injury and moved on.
Ages ago, a doctor friend told me of a time when a rugby player on his provincial team asked to speak to him in private. The doctor had noticed the player had a very red eye, but thought it could be any one of several things.
“Is pink eye real?” the player asked. “Yep,” said the doctor, taking more interest in the slightly inflamed eye. “Conjunctivitis can be contagious.”
“No,” said the player. “If someone, um, got some sperm in their eye, could that cause pink eye?”
The rest of the story is not suitable for sharing. But the Editor need fear not. Our players are in good hands. As for the players themselves ... well, you know what they say about young men with too much money and time on their hands ...
I thought it might make a nice change from the usual extracting the Michael and/or ranting that I thrive on. You know, a kind of pseudo-scientific indepth look at how a high impact sport deals with a short recovery span. Unfortunately it is anything but. My wide range of sports medicine contacts ended up making me, in general terms, snort coffee out of my nose.
The long and the short of it is that players are being managed to the nth degree in the national provincial championship, and bigger squads mean potential injuries are covered by the increased depth in the squads. This depth isn’t as deep as it could be in some cases, which explains why we see some teams over-perform one day and then do not so well a few short days later.
Anyway, the physios and doctors I talked to completely blew the Editor’s idea out of the water and reduced this to just another Michael extraction. It appears the hardest aspect of managing injuries and potential injuries in semi-professional rugby teams is not laughing at the more bizarre aspects.
One physio told me of a burly loosie who presented last year with an incredible pain in his left buttock. It sent terrible pains down his leg and was affecting his standing, walking, et cetera. After much palpitation of said buttock, head scratching over sciatica and lots of bad language from said loosie, a scan was ordered which showed a large piece of darning needle causing problems.
This, via a process of elimination, had apparently been there since a fight in home economics went horribly wrong in Year Seven. It seemed the muscle-building requirements of modern loose forward play had shifted the remains of the needle to one of the gluteal nerves 10 years later. A small operation removed the needle and allowed the loosie in question to have an entirely forgettable career at the top level.
Another physio had a more disturbing experience. A player turned up complaining of thigh tightness. The physio (a male) asked him to strip down to his jocks. This normally would not have presented a problem, other than that the player in question was wearing (and I quote) “a red satin G-banger with a yellow love heart on the….ahem, front”. For those not sure what a G-banger is, I believe the common term (being a boxer shorts man myself) is G-string or thong.
Physiotherapists are nothing if not professional but this was almost beyond the pale for this poor chap. He asked one of his colleagues to treat the injury and moved on.
Ages ago, a doctor friend told me of a time when a rugby player on his provincial team asked to speak to him in private. The doctor had noticed the player had a very red eye, but thought it could be any one of several things.
“Is pink eye real?” the player asked. “Yep,” said the doctor, taking more interest in the slightly inflamed eye. “Conjunctivitis can be contagious.”
“No,” said the player. “If someone, um, got some sperm in their eye, could that cause pink eye?”
The rest of the story is not suitable for sharing. But the Editor need fear not. Our players are in good hands. As for the players themselves ... well, you know what they say about young men with too much money and time on their hands ...
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