'Strap it up and carry on': the culture of playing injured

This was the first article I wrote for 'The Cambridge Student', a university newspaper of which I was joint Sports Editor at the time. First published 07/10/10.

Anyone who’s ever played sport knows how it feels – you pick up a knock, but you don’t want to come off, so you play through it. And it doesn’t just apply on the pitch. How many of us can honestly say that we followed the doctor’s advice to the letter, and weren’t even a little bit tempted to come back from injury earlier than we should?

This attitude can be summed up by a phrase I heard countless times during my two years of university sport – ‘just strap it up and carry on’. It’s no surprise that this trend is also prevalent among professional sportsmen and women – after all, sport is in a very real way their life. But there comes a point when every player has to accept that they’re not fit to carry on. Doesn’t there?

Let me explain. On 5th September I sat in front of my TV watching Leicester take on Northampton in the Aviva Premiership. Midway through the second half, Leicester prop Marcos Ayerza stood up from the bottom of a ruck, clearly concussed. As he staggered across the pitch, clearly with no idea of where he was or what was going on, the commentators heaped praise on his “bravery” and “dedication” for staying on the field . 

Surely I can’t be the only one who sees a problem here. We all admire players who shrug off  a knock for the good of their team. But this was an individual who, by staying on the pitch while clearly un­fit to play, was endangering himself and those around him. At times like this doesn’t common sense have to intervene, and the safety of players have to be protected, even from their own “dedication”?

This problem doesn’t begin and end with players, or with rugby. It is part of a prevailing culture in professional sport that values players more highly if they’re prepared to put themselves at risk, and that doesn’t regard injury as a legitimate excuse for non-participation. Can it be right that, even in a case like Ayerza’s, physios have no power to make a player leave the field? Or that players would rather be injected with cortisone than admit they’re in too much pain to play?

And fans are guilty too. After the 2006 World Cup, the decision to play an un­fit Wayne Rooney was widely criticised. But how much more criticism would there have been had Rooney not gone to the tournament at all, and his lack of ­ fitness been given as the reason? The same attitude can be seen week in, week out in the Premiership – fans expect to see their favourite players on the pitch, managers want their stars in the game, and players are keen to oblige.

Perhaps the most poignant example of this trend comes from athletics. In the run-up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, 110m hurdler Liu Xiang was the host nation’s only real hope for athletics gold. Despite rumours of an injury, organisers insisted he would be ­fit to compete. In his heat, Liu visibly limped onto the track, only to pull out at the start of the race. The injury he was carrying would in fact rule him out for the next 13 months. The day after these dramatic events, Liu made a public apology to the Chinese media. The fact that he felt compelled to do so shows how ­firmly the culture of ‘strap it up and carry on’ has taken hold.

It’s easy to see why this trend has become so prevalent. Managers and coaches demand total commitment, fans demand to see stars giving it their all, and players don’t want to be left on the sidelines. But in this professional era, with schedules becoming increasingly gruelling and matches involving ever greater physical punishment, attitudes to injury need to become more professional too. Sport already takes enough of a physical and emotional toll. Players, and those responsible for their welfare, shouldn’t be making it worse.