PLAYING HURT

Abstract

Professional football is, in terms of the risk of injury, a high-risk occupation. The objects of this study are to examine the ways in which professional footballers respond to and cope with injury and, in this context, we focus on the culture of `playing hurt' in football. The study involved semi-structured interviews with former and current professional footballers as well as interviews with club doctors and physiotherapists. The interviews focused centrally on the players' experiences of injury and rehabilitation, the attitudes of players, coaches/managers and others towards injury, and their relationships, particularly in the context of injury, with the club doctor and physiotherapist(s). Our findings indicate that incurring an injury has a number of well-understood meanings for players. The meanings associated with pain and injury, as well as the status of players who are unable to play because of injury, can only be fully understood by locating these shared meanings within the network of social relations characteristic of professional football. It is argued that the almost unrelenting pressure on players to continue playing through injury exacts a heavy cost from many players in terms of pain, injury and long-term chronic disability.