The head of women’s football for World Cup co-hosts Australia has called for more research into anterior cruciate ligament injuries.
Leah Williamson and Beth Mead of England will miss this month’s competition due to a major knee injury, according to Football Australia’s Sarah Walsh, who also called it a “shame” that players.
She holds “hundreds of years of underinvestment” in research responsible.
Women have been treated like small guys for a very long time, she claimed.
“Research is seriously lacking. The entire high-performance ecosystem was created by men for men and is centred around males.
Williamson and Mead’s teammate at Arsenal, Dutch striker Vivianne Miedema, who sustained an ACL injury in December, will also be absent from the Women’s Women Cup, which will be held in Australia and New Zealand from 20 July to 20 August.
Throughout her own playing career, which featured 70 caps for Australia, Walsh, 40, sustained severe knee injuries.
On BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, she commented, “I would have loved to have known if my menstrual cycle had contributed to any one of my knee reconstructions.”
We haven’t even begun to touch the surface, and it has taken a century of underinvestment in women’s football to bring us to this position, where we have lost a number of different players for this World Cup, which is unfortunate because we won’t get to see them.
According to research, female football players are more likely than male players to sustain an ACL injury, with estimations ranging from two to eight times higher.
There are several ideas as to why this is the case, ranging from the anatomical distinctions between men and women to the part hormones and the female menstrual cycle play.
It has been proposed that special equipment should be created for women to lessen the chance of ACL injuries, but Walsh thinks the scientific community should be responsible for coming up with a solution.
She asserted that research, rather than [the kit] makers, was the real problem.
‘Women’s football is breaking new ground’
Walsh has been encouraged by the advancements being made on the pitch despite the fact that women’s football continues to trail behind men’s football in terms of money and research.
She thinks that Fifa was assisted by a boom in popularity around the world while negotiating the broadcast rights for the 2023 Women’s World Cup.
Gianni Infantino, the president of Fifa, has threatened a blackout of European TV if rights deals were not upgraded.
Women’s football is at a really interesting crossroads right now, according to Walsh. It is beginning to question the current quo and pave new ground.
“You would have seen that with the broadcast rights. Fifa, as rights holder, held their ground in many of the big markets in Europe to really extract the right value because if we continue to undersell these rights the ecosystem won’t correct around it.
“I think that is really interesting. We are in this moment in women’s sport where these female athletes are breaking new ground and I think there are other industries that will benefit from this change.”
All 64 matches at the Women’s World Cup will be broadcast in the UK on either the BBC or ITV, except for the final, which will be shown on both BBC One and ITV1.
Fans can listen to BBC Radio 5 Live coverage on BBC Sounds, DAB radio, the BBC Sport website, and the BBC Sport app. The BBC will also be providing live commentary on BBC Radio 5 Live and 5 Sports Extra.
