Sammy Murrell: Spare a thought for the players not playing
"As the first whistle of the World Cup sounds at Eden Park tonight, I want to acknowledge the players who won’t be taking the field in Australia and Aotearoa this winter."
Sammy Murrell is a former New Zealand Junior Football Fern from Southland who now lives in the United States after playing and studying at Havard University. Murrell has joined The Tribune team as a columnist for the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup.
In the 89th minute of the second-to-last game of my first season at Harvard, a three-player collision in the penalty box left me with a searing pain in my right foot. Suspecting a break, our team physio whisked me away in a golf cart for an X-ray. The X-ray came back fine, but bruising on the sole of my foot and some functional tests showed signs of—and an MRI confirmed—a Lisfranc fracture.
Thus ensued eight weeks on crutches with no weight-bearing, three uncertain months in-and-out of a moon boot, careful first steps out of the boot in none other than our gorgeous Queen’s Park, and months of physiotherapy. I finally got back on the field ten months later.
I guess I was “lucky” that the big injury of my football career happened at the end of a season. I had time to recover before the next big event rolled around.
As the first whistle of the World Cup sounds at Eden Park tonight, I want to acknowledge the players who won’t be taking the field in Australia and Aotearoa this winter.
The United States—who are looking to add a fifth World Cup title to their impressive accolades – has some key players out with injury.
Captain Becky Sauerbrunn is out with a foot injury. Mallory Swanson (née Pugh), who has been a relentless attacking force in the build-up to the tournament (and who scored a goal in our 2-0 loss to the US at the 2016 U-20 World Cup in Papua New Guinea), suffered a patella tendon tear in April.
Three key players are missing from the English side due to knee injuries; we won’t see captain Leah Williamson, Beth Mead, or Fran Kirby chase a first World Cup title for the Lionesses after their thrilling maiden European Championship win in 2022. Heartbreakingly, German defender Carolin Simon tore her ACL less than two weeks ago during a warm-up game against Zambia. Zambia’s starting goalkeeper, Hazel Nali, will miss her side’s World Cup debut due to an ACL and MCL tear.
From our Ford Football Ferns, goal-scoring machine Katie Rood is out with an ACL tear from May.
Rood consistently darted past me and hit the top corner of the onion bag at training when we were teammates at Glenfield Rovers, and I’m gutted that we won’t see her dancing through defences at this tournament.
The shocking number of players unavailable for the 2023 Women’s World Cup Down Under—and specifically, the number of ACL tears—has not gone unnoticed.
Female athletes are 4-6 times more likely than male athletes to suffer an ACL tear in cutting sports like football. The risk of an ACL tear for a female footballer or basketballer who plays throughout an entire year is about 5%.
In the past decade, the incidence of ACL reconstruction surgery in Aotearoa increased by 120% among females aged 15 - 19 and by 53% among females aged 20 - 24.
Netball, football, and rugby accounted for the highest number of sports-related ACL surgeries.
Research suggests that the greater susceptibility of female athletes to certain injuries might be in part due to differences in the way our bodies move and function. While some risk factors are unavoidable, organizations involved in women’s football have a lot of room for improvement.
More sports medicine research focused on female athletes, support resources on par with what male players receive, and greater availability of sports gear tailored to our bodies (like these football boots from Nike) are just a few examples of areas that need to improve to keep up with the growth of women’s football across the globe.
I hope that on top of showcasing the best of the best of women’s football, the laundry list of injured players who will miss out on the 2023 Women’s World Cup is enough to drive the changes needed to make the beautiful game safer for girls and women at all levels of the sport.
The ten months I spent on the sidelines while I recovered from a Lisfranc fracture were some of the lowest days of my playing career. As the Ford Football Ferns kick off our home World Cup against Norway, I’ll be thinking of the players who will be watching from the stands or from home.
You can read more from Sammy over on her Substack, Murrell of the Story