Abstract
Objectives: Participation among female youth in competitive rugby league has grown rapidly, leading to an increased injury rate. Collecting female injury data in rugby league seasons helps identify injury patterns, enabling targeted interventions to reduce injuries. This study aimed to describe the site, type, and mechanism of injuries in under-17 and under-19 female rugby league players.
Design: A retrospective study on injury epidemiology in two female rugby league competitions during the 2025 season was conducted.
Methods: Injuries were reported via a standardised form that documented the site, type, and mechanism across 20 teams. Descriptive statistics, chi-square tests of independence, Fisher's exact pairwise comparisons, and standardised residuals were calculated appropriately.
Results: 16 out of 20 teams provided injury data, with a total of 492 injuries. Independently, the most common injuries per site, type, and mechanism were those in the ankle (83), ligament and joint (177), and contact (343), respectively. Pairwise comparison revealed the highest observed frequencies were ankle joint and ligamentinjuries (65; site and type), arm/hand tackling injuries (34, site and mechanism), and joint and ligament tackled injuries (49, type and mechanism).
Conclusions: Monitoring injury trends among female rugby league players may enable practitioners to refine sport-specific techniques and physical preparedness programmes that could reduce injury risk.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1-6 |
| Journal | Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | E-pub ahead of print - 29 Jun 2026 |
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