Christy O'Connor on GAA: What timeline can GAA players target if they suffer ACL injuries?

A couple of months into the 2018 football season, Bernard Brogan was going through a shooting routine at Dublin training when he felt a pop in his knee, that unmistakeable sound that hints at the damage and impending terror every sports person dreads – a tear in the ACL.

When a scan confirmed his worst fears, Brogan’s season looked over. Except he wasn’t willing to believe that it was. Initially, Brogan considered avoiding surgery and rehabbing his way back to fitness, but he choose not to go down that path and take the plunge by going under the knife instead.

After surgery, Brogan immediately targeted a comeback by late summer. It sounded completely unrealistic, especially when most professional athletes take at least nine months to recover from ACL reconstruction. Just 23 weeks post-surgery though, Brogan was back, lining out against Roscommon in the Super 8s.

Brogan admitted later that season that he felt 100% fit for that match. But when he took stock of the situation at the end of the season, he did change the numbers. “I was probably 90% as I was still carrying a bit of limp,” said Brogan. “I was able to run and my speed was fine. 

My endurance was fine. My fitness testing was good but the body just wasn’t 100%.” 

Jim Gavin and the management realised as much too and Brogan didn’t feature again in the championship after that cameo role against Roscommon, which was Dublin’s last game in the Super 8s.

Dublin didn’t need Brogan to be able to win that championship comfortably, going on to beat Galway and Tyrone in the All-Ireland semi-final and final by an aggregate margin of 15 points.

As soon as Nickie Quaid had recovered from his ACL tear in April though, after another record-breaking comeback for an amateur sportsperson, he was thrown straight into the action for the first round of the championship against Tipperary.

Quaid was always going to play once the management and medical team felt he was ready but the biggest surprise was around the superhuman powers of recovery Quaid showed to be able to regain his fitness so quickly; he made it back in 157 days.

The timeframe of recovery was freakish. 

In a 2023 study done on German football, conducted from an analysis on return to competition from a total of 607 ACL injuries, the fastest return to play was 247 days, just over eight months. That was a professional player while the fastest return in semi-professional was 333 days (11 months). In amateur football, it was 376 days (12 months).

Later that year though, the Galway hurler Davy Burke showed that GAA players have a whole different level of mental resilience again when it comes to their powers of recovery. Seven months to the day from rupturing his ACL, Burke came on as a substitute in St Thomas’ 2023 county semi-final win against Sarsfields. 

When Thomas’ won a second All-Ireland title three months later, Burke was the best player on the pitch in the final.

IMMENSE

Brogan, Quaid and Burke are elite GAA players with the immense commitment, attitude and will-power to do what they did, but a recent new study found that almost 90% of GAA players who suffer ACL injury have a similar recovery rate to professional sports.

The work involving researchers from Dublin City University (DCU) and the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) at the UPMC Sports Surgery Clinic in Santry reported the recovery rate after investigating anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) reconstruction surgery outcomes in 1,891 Gaelic football, hurling and camogie players.

With Gaelic games ranking among the world’s most physically demanding field sports, with rapid changes of direction, physical contact and jumping and landing, the research filled a gap in knowledge about recovery rates from ACL injuries among GAA players because specialists had been relying on data from other sports like soccer or Aussie Rules.

The study found players typically returned to the sport following injury after around 10.8 months, with similar timelines for both men and women.

Quaid more than proved how those return-to-sport rates are on par with professional sports - especially when compared with another elite goalkeeper from one of the biggest football clubs in the world.

In August 2023, Real Madrid and Belgium goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois suffered an ACL tear before suffering another setback in late March 2024 at the training ground in Valdebebas when tearing the meniscus in his other knee. Either way, Courtois’ season looked over. Again.

Except it wasn’t. The goalkeeper had two options; fix the ligament or remove it. The first course of action meant 12 weeks on the sideline, whereas removing, or clearing up the ligament was a six-week layoff. Courtois decided on the latter. His key issue was timing. The Champions League final was scheduled for June 1. That just gave Courtois the margin to make it back.

He just had to rely on backup keeper Andriy Lunin and his team-mates to get him there, and then hope that manager Carlo Ancelotti would pick him. 

The rest was up to Courtois, who was selected for the final, keeping a clean sheet as Madrid secured a 15th UCL title.

“It was very difficult but from the very start, my idea was to be positive, never give up, to push the limits,” said Courtois before that final. “Lots of people thought my season had ended. But I knew it hadn’t.” 

Quaid knew his season hadn’t ended too, but he isn’t a professional sportsperson with one of the richest clubs in the world. And he proved how GAA players who suffer an ACL injury haven’t just a similar recovery rate to professional sports – they often have a far better rate.