Life after football

Retired players would do it all again despite the pain

At the Football Australasia conference in Melbourne in late 2003, a study of retired AFL/VFL players has found 10% of them have had hip replacements and 4% have had knee replacements, compared to 1.5% each in the general population. Even with these highly increased risks of joint degeneration, most of the retired players interviewed didn't express any regret at playing, with the positives to come out of the game far greater than the negatives. A further study found that 28% or more AFL players had their career-ended by injury. The figures for rugby league and union are probably similar, with Sydney Swans and former Manly doctor Nathan Gibbs claiming that every single ex-professional football player would get arthritis in at least one lower limb joint later in life. Although there was a very high profile exception in the finals last year (Michael Voss' knee) it is generally rare for lower limb joints to be injected with local anaesthetic to play, this procedure being reserved for conditions that do not cause long-term problems. Download the Powerpoint presentations of injuryupdate.com.au's Dr. John Orchard on career-ending injuries in football. Read more on retired football players .

Coping with retirement is often very difficult for football players. It is even more difficult when a player's career has been prematurely ended by injury.

Retired football players have a greater incidence of knee problems than the general population. Abstract from the Medical Journal of Australia

Some players make the voluntary choice that life as an elite athlete is not for them. Read about Cadyn Beatham's decision to quit St. Kilda . Visit the AFL's retirement page .

Ben Darwin retires from rugby

A sad but inevitable side-effect from the World Cup has seen Ben Darwin forced to retire from rugby union, after a near catastrophic scrum injury in the semi-final. Darwin suffered a cervical disc prolapse with transient quadriplegia (loss of use of the arms and legs) which fortunately returned after minutes. The odds of him suffering a fully blown spinal injury if he returned to rugby scrummaging were dramatically increased, hence doctors were unanimous in recommending he retire while he still had his full health. Read more at Foxsports .

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