Saturday’s FT Magazine had a fascinating cover story by Robert Hudson about sports injuries, and how statistics can demonstrate the value of avoiding them, or treating them better.

 In US football, according to number-cruncher Bill Barnwell, there is a 0.42 correlation between a team’s year-on-year success and injuries to key offensive players. The correlation with defensive players is lower, 0.29. The key player, the quarterback, has a correlation of 0.30 all on his own.
 
Some interesting conclusions have emerged from statistical analysis of rugby injuries, Hudson reports. For example, one study (unreferenced) found that a hamstring injury typically loses a player an average of 14 days; a recurrence of the injury, 25 days.
 
Almost all the recurrences happen on the field within a month of returning to the team, and are more likely after an hour of play. It thus makes sense to allow a player returning from such an injury only an hour on the field before replacing him.
 
The Football Association has nothing to match this work. As a lifelong supporter of Newcastle United – you can’t abandon your home town team, however aggravating they are – I don’t find this surprising. Players are perpetually injured at Newcastle. Think of Michael Owen, and despair.
 
Nobody has yet published a study that links success in football to injury rates, though it’s plain to any fan there is such a link. An interesting website is run by Australian sports injury specialist John Orchard. He also runs one specifically about cricket injuries. According to Hudson, John Orchard has an article in the press at British Journal of Sports Medicine urging football to catch up.