New physio scheme welcomed

GAELIC GAMES: DUBLIN'S MOST recent All-Ireland winning manager, Pat O'Neill, has welcomed yesterday's launch of the campaign for accredited sports physiotherapists, Chartered Physiotherapists in Sport.

O’Neill, one of the country’s leading sports medicine practitioners and chair of last year’s sub-committee that investigated the problem of burn-out in Gaelic games, said a specific qualification for sports physios was overdue.

“Basically, when you qualify as an undergraduate you could say ‘I’m a physiotherapist and I can treat sports injuries’,” he said. “In the past a medical graduate could say ‘I don’t think I’ll specialise so I’ll become a GP’. But that has changed, and there is now an extensive training programme for general practice, and this brings physiotherapy into line with those standards.

“There is also a concern because “sports therapists” of all sorts turn up after completing a six-week course in massage therapy and deciding that they can treat sports injuries.”

The role of physiotherapy in the treatment of sports injuries has greatly expanded in recent years. O’Neill recalls it was negligible when he played on Kevin Heffernan’s All-Ireland-winning teams.

“In our day the Dublin team of the 1970s had no physio and no team doctor – apart from the two who were playing (O’Neill and David Hickey, earlier this week named as selector on Pat Gilroy’s Dublin management team).

“Accreditation sets standards, which ensures the delivery of a proper service to players as well as indemnity because of the professional standard of care.”

As all field games encounter similar problems, the role of the physiotherapist within the GAA is similar to other sports.

Proper accreditation will be one of the areas looked at by the association’s beefed-up medical scientific and welfare committee.

“In rugby, physios are given the mandate to manage injuries by the chief medical officer of the IRFU,” O’Neill said. “In Gaelic games the same happens, although the team doctor still has a major say.

“At the moment the medical committee in Croke Park is considering recommendations on a number of areas, such as drugs control, concussion, the mandatory use of helmets in hurling and the issue of blood subs, which has been in the news in rugby.

“There’s also the question of unnecessary treatment. At the moment, cryotherapy and hyperbaric oxygen treatments are popular and very expensive, despite the lack of hard evidence that they actually do help injuries to heal.”