29/02/2020- 3 hours

Today was a Saturday morning game at South Dartmoor CC for U12’s age group against U13’s Dawlish. This game consisted of 4 20-minute intervals. Before the start of the game, I aided with the warm up by giving them some dynamic stretching this included; arm circles, open and closing the arms, trunk rotation, side flexion, standing hamstring stretch, standing quadricep stretch, and “feed the chickens” stretch (this is where they scoop their hands down the back of their calves while stepping forward, changing legs- also known as a walking calf stretch).

During the first 20-minute interval no injuries occurred. However, during the second interval an athlete came off the pitch 15 minutes in with a nosebleed. I applied general first aid to stop the bleeding, once the bleeding had stopped I needed to make sure the athlete didn’t suffer a concussion, mainly checking for any dizziness so I asked him how many fingers I was holding up, asked him what his name was and what his birthday was, the coach was stood with me to ensure he was answering these questions correctly (which he did). He then said that he felt fine to continue playing as he mentioned that he has suffered nosebleeds before from contact by the ball. He carried on playing in the last interval (sat out for the third interval). During the third interval, a player went down due to ‘rolling’ his ankle, due to the ‘bounce back’ system that Saints have he got back up and carried on. Once the third interval had finished and the players walked over to the coach for a team talk, I noticed that that player walked over with a slight limp, so I asked him if I could assess his ankle, I check his ROM which all seemed fine in comparison to his other ankle, I asked him how his pain felt out of 10 and he stated it feels okay 2-3/10 while running but seemed to feel stiff when he was walking off the pitch. He didn’t want me to strap up his ankle as he said he felt fine, so I didn’t need to do anything.

During the last interval of the game a player fell onto his elbow roughly 10 minutes in. He wanted to keep playing but he seemed to look as if he was in a lot of pain, I asked the coach if he could call him over so I could asses his elbow. I checked the ROM of his right elbow which was reduced due to the pain it was causing him. I game him an instant ice pack to apply to his elbow with pressure added by his other hand, I told him he needed to leave it on there for the rest of the game (10-minutes). After 10-minutes had gone, he said the pain had disappeared, I then checked him ROM again and palpated the bony landmarks which all seemed fine. I suggested to apply an ice pack (bag of frozen peas) to his elbow when he gets home, but try to keep moving it as much as possible to avoid the limb stiffening.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *