Its not as bas as its made out to be. I walked back to the car, i couldnât drive alright as the foot wouldnât work.
Sounds fair innocuous. That has put me right off togging for a game this evening
Lad, i was standing watching the drill and the ball broke a few yards, i went to run and ping it back, i heard a pop and went down like a sack of shit. I looked around to fuck someone out of it for messing but noone was there. I knew i was fucked then
Thatâs the bit lads often say about it going on them
This happened a lad in work a few years ago. They had to operate and retrieve the tendon as it runs up in behind your calf muscle. After finding the tendon they have to hook onto it and draw it down over a few weeks before reattachment.
Doesnât sound like what you have.
No mine is fixable without surgery. It snapped in two but didnt unravel (for want of a better word)
Im in plaster paris but my foot is pointing down forcing the calf and heel together and the tendon will hopefully heal. If it isnt knitting in a fortnight theyâll operate
Its a fair fucking awkward position.
Sorry to hear that. Thatâs brutal.
Anybody have any must listen/reads.
I have 6 credits on audible and canât go far for a few months
Anything by Bill Bryson is great for when youâre lazing around but want to learn something.
Happened mate playing astroâŚno driving the biggest issue. Back playing golf 5 months laterâŚhe snapped his completely as well
Would you be fairly active in terms of 5 a side or running or the likes? Iâm shitting now after hearing that. Started back running a bit lately and have a cunt of a stiff sore Achilles
I hadnt done astro or that in years but was doing decent training and wasnt a couch potato.
I canât run because of leg pain
That and your big arse
I always had a big arse. It was some advantage
Iv an awful pain in my elbow the last few weeks. Fine day to day but when I grip anything I get a darting pain either side of my elbow. To the extent that I canât hold a golf club even
Trailblazerand hurler always
Following productive stints at the likes of Leinster, Munster and Manchester City, physiotherapist David Breen is headed for his latest posting at Harlequins RFC in London
A photo of the keepsake he had left behind several years ago at Leinster Rugbyâs training base in Dublin popped up on David Breenâs phone recently â a familiar battered hurley.
It has become something of a trademark parting gift the former Limerick captain likes to leave when moving on from clubs where he has worked as a physiotherapist.
He tucked one away as a souvenir for Wasps too, while Pep Guardiola should not be surprised if he stumbles across a carved piece of ash resting against a wall in Manchester Cityâs facilities.
Most recently, Breen worked with Munster Rugbyâs first team for two years but he moved back to the UK in July after accepting the position of senior rehab physiotherapist with Harlequins. It has been a career less ordinary.
He started his new role with the London-based outfit just days before Limerickâs All-Ireland SHC final victory over Kilkenny, and so the former Treaty forward watched his county make history from a pub in Twickenham. âI just couldnât arrange it to get off and fly back in time,â he says.
Breen retired from intercounty hurling at the end of the 2015 campaign, walking away with a Munster medal mined from 2013. In 2016, alongside his brothers Kieran and Adrian, he won an All-Ireland club medal with Na Piarsaigh, scoring 0-2 in the final win over Cushendall.
At the time, Breen was head physio with the Leinster Rugby Academy â working with, among others, Joey Carbery and Garry Ringrose. He joined Wasps later that year, and would spend four seasons with their first team.
Then in 2020 he moved to Manchester City, working with the Premier League clubâs elite development squad.
âItâs on another scale completely,â says Breen. âItâs even a different beast to other English teams because Manchester City is the flagship club of the City Football Group â which owns several clubs around the world.â
Breen worked with Cityâs emerging academy players, many of whom have since progressed to play in the Premier League â including Cole Palmer, who has just joined Chelsea for a transfer free of over âŹ52 million.
âWhere I was working, with the under-23s, there was a separate staffing department called the loans group,â recalls Breen. âThey would purely focus on players who were out on loan across the world.
âIf a player was at one of the feeder clubs, then staff would be sent out there to upskill the clubs in best practices. You definitely got a sense you were in a completely different ball game.â
Collision sport
Hurling was always his game, though. Na Piarsaigh are in action tonight against Doon in Bruff and, while Breenâs days at that level are behind him now, he will be lining out at TUS Athlone earlier in the afternoon as a keynote speaker at the GAAâs Sports Medicine and Sports Science Conference. The gathering will focus on lower limb injuries.
âRugby is essentially a collision sport, itâs different to soccer and GAA which are essentially evasion sports,â explains Breen. âThey are contact sports, but you are trying to evade opponents.
âYou also must cover a lot of ground at high speed. Soccer, Aussie Rules, GAA, they are similar in that regard and players pick up similar injuries, predominately lower limb ones.â
Lower limb traumas are the most common category of injuries in the GAA. In relation to the GAAâs injury benefit fund, the report from October 2021 to September 2022 shows knee injuries were the most frequent â 2,106 (1,303 of which occurred in adult football). There were 677 ankle injuries, 508 leg, 342 thigh, 149 foot. Shoulder (617) were the only non-lower limb injuries in the top bracket.
âWe are a little bit behind around injury epidemiological research in the GAA,â says Breen. âBut there is some good work starting to be done on it, recording injuries more accurately and sharing that information on a centralised database.
âThat is the first step to understanding what your typical hurling and Gaelic football injuries are. Then you can put steps in place to mitigate against those, and try bulletproof guys as best you can.â
But as Ephie Fitzgerald highlighted in these pages during the week, the professional demands now placed on amateur intercounty players is another area of concern in terms of injury.
Inebriated chatter
Breen admits players in English rugby and soccer clubs find it difficult to get their heads around the concept of how GAA intercounty players operate. If the huge amount of training is the haystack, finding time for recovery is the needle. Breen believes education is the key.
âThe smarter coaches will put proper value on recovery, they will know when to push and when to pull back,â he says.
âIssues arise when you have inexperienced staff or coaches that just want to âgo, go, goâ, or have a kind of âif they break, they breakâ attitude. That just leads to problems.
âThe best you can do is improve understanding in terms of training and recovery, so those involved know that sitting in a car for an hour driving home is not recovery, sitting in an office from 9-5 is not recovery, standing in a classroom teaching is not recovery. Itâs just acknowledging that and planning for it.â
Nobody in Limerick was planning for the hurling riches which have poured through the county in recent years, creating fields of gold along the Shannon.
Breen was one of those who felt something good was coming, but five All-Ireland titles in six years were too wild to even have been dreamt up during inebriated bar-counter chatter.
âThere was so much good work going on at underage and some really good talent coming through,â recalls Breen, who also helped out with the Limerick medical team in recent seasons.
âGraeme Mulcahy and Nickie Quaid would have been involved when I was there, and even back then there would have been a feeling we had a good team but we just needed a little bit extra to get all the pieces in place.
Starting over
âJohn Kiely was perfectly placed to come in and take over, they were able to get some visionaries in the dressingroom to coach the team and everything just followed. I always felt the potential was there, but I never thought theyâd be as successful as they have been. Long may it continue.â
His time with Munster ended on a successful note too, with the club capturing the URC in May. His partner, Emma Farquharson, is from London, and when an opportunity arose for Breen to work with Harlequins, they raised anchor once again.
The last few weeks have been a haze of starting over, selling a car in Limerick and buying a new one in London. Moving boxes. Moving houses. Moving lives. As for the hurleys? Well, theyâre on the way.
âI like to bring a hurley to every club Iâve worked in, and then it stays there after I go,â smiles Breen.
âSome of the lads in Leinster sent me a picture of one Iâd left, itâs a bit of a relic at this stage, with graffiti all over it, but itâs still there.
âIâm shipping the hurleys over, so hopefully there will be one sitting in the Harlequins gym shortly.â
David Breen is a trailblazing physiotherapist these days. But a hurler, always.
- The Gaelic Games Sports Medicine and Sports Science Conference will take place in TUS Athlone today, with registration beginning at 9.15am. Among the keynote speakers are David Breen, Ian Jeffreys, Dr Ronan Kearney, Prof Kirsty Elliott-Sale, Dr Enda White, Jack Hickey, Dr Joe Jordan and Jessie Barr.
David Breen, former Na Piarsaigh and Limerick hurler: âI like to bring a hurley to every club Iâve worked in, and then it stays there after I go.â Photograph: Laszlo Geczo/Inpho
Been doing contrast baths on the foot for swelling, Iâm not convinced
As in hot/cold and repeat?
Yeah, no impact on the swelling