Injury Severity

It is also useful to understand the impact of injuries in addition to how frequently they occur, particularly how long players are subsequently unavailable (termed ’injury severity’). It is estimated that mean average time lost per injury in womens rugby 15s ranges between 5 to 128 days (Fuller and Taylor, 2023; 2024). The mean number of days lost per injury for the backs appears to exceed that of the forwards in rugby 15s (Fuller and Taylor, 2023; 2024; 2025).  

One other injury outcome of interest is injury burden, which is the product of injury incidence and mean severity. The purpose of highlighting injury burden is to provide an overall view of risk by accounting for both how frequently injuries occur and the subsequent time lost (Fuller, 2018). The range for overall match injury burden in elite women’s rugby 15s has been shown between 42 and 3,179 days lost per 1000 player-match-hours, or between 1 and 64 days lost per team per match (Fuller and Taylor, 2022; 2023). Match injury burden for the backs in rugby 15s appears to be greater than for forwards, which is driven by the greater mean injury severity (Fuller and Taylor, 2017; 2022; 2023). A wider range of injury burden estimates is seen in elite women’s rugby 7s than 15s (Fuller and Taylor, 2021; 2021b), and the greater injury burden in backs than forwards appears to be influenced by the injury incidence rates between the two positional units (Fuller and Taylor, 2021; 2021b; 2024b).