Posted by Hayden at 12:00am, Tuesday 6 July 2021

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Do niggles matter?

Yep. Unfortunately niggles do matter!

That tight calf, the pain in your knee that comes and goes, that annoying back pain that interrupts your day slightly. It might not affect your ability on the football pitch, but these niggles add up.

A recent Australian study included football clubs in NSW at various levels of competitiveness from NPL NSW and below. Players were asked to complete a questionnaire every week with a simple set of questions about whether or not they were in perfect physical condition.

Q1: Have you had any difficulty participating in normal training/ competition in the past week?
Q2: To what extent have you reduced your training volume due to the above?
Q3: To what extent has injury, illness or other affected your performance in the past week?
Q4: To what extent have you experienced symptoms/ health complaints during the past week?

Most of us would report something for at least one or two of those questions, even if the answer is “to a minor extent”

They also collected information about how much training each player was exposed to and when someone was actually unable to train or play due to injury or illness. These were called “Time-Loss” injuries, while reporting an injury but still training was called a “Non-Time-Loss” injury, otherwise known as a niggle.

The risk of a Time-Loss injury was 3.6 and 6.9 times higher when a “minor” niggle or a “moderate” niggle was reported in the week prior.

Amazingly, over 25% of players were reporting a niggle each week, not always the same person (but we all know that one person that’s always injured). This means that those players were far more likely to suffer an injury that keeps them out of the game in the next week!

So, what do you do about it?

Updated 9:32pm, Tuesday 6 July 2021