Reds hoping for injury boost

26 May 2010 11:14
Liverpool FC are hoping for a lot less injuries next season. The Reds are hoping that the recruitment of Dr Peter Brukner, their new Head of Sports Medicine and Sport Science, will reduce the amount of time their players spend in the treatment room. "The players will notice an immediate difference come the start of the 2010-11 season," said Dr Brukner, who is going to South Africa with the Australian World Cup squad. "Liverpool's set-up is already the equal of any Premier League club. I want to now take it to the next level and make it the benchmark in world football for sports medicine and sports science. I'm quite confident we'll do that. "Our plan is for the players to do a 15-minute session before they start training. This will be purely on injury prevention - working on hamstrings, groins, thighs, calves and so on. "The other thing we'll be doing more of is monitoring their general well-being, their general health and their workload. "There's a lot of GPS systems now and they're not just for cars. It'll be like having a sat nav on every player! We'll be able to modify their programmes depending on how much they play and how quickly they recover. "It's our responsibility to sell that to the players and I don't think that will be difficult because they don't want to be injured. "You can't stop all injuries. There are certain injuries which are inevitable - like when someone gets a kick or something. "But I think we can certainly reduce the amount of injuries - particularly what we call soft tissue injuries. Things like hamstring muscle, groin muscle, calf muscle and tears. "Football is probably a little bit behind the cutting edge that's out there in other parts of the world. "Maybe that's a cultural thing with football clubs - the traditional set-up has been the same for many years. Other sports in other countries have maybe gone ahead a bit. The idea now is to get the best of what's out there around the world and bring it to Liverpool."

Source: FOOTYMAD