The psychology of anterior cruciate ligament injury rehabilitation amongst professional rugby union players

[From the introduction:]Within professional contact sports, injury has been reported frequently by athletes as causing stress (Anshel, 2001; Noblet & Gifford, 2002). Particularly within rugby union where injury has been reported as one of the top four stressors experienced by elite adolescent players (Nicholls & Polman, 2007), and the most frequent stressor by adult professional players (Nicholls Holt, Polman, & Bloomfield, 2006). A variety of coping strategies are utilized to manage these stressors, with the effectiveness varying per player (Nicholls et al., 2006). Although to date no research has found a causal relationship between injury as a source of stress and the actual incidence of injury such research suggest that injury can significantly increase the stress experienced by athletes. This is supported by the findings that following serious sports injury, elite athletes have reported this to be a stressful experience (Gould, Udry, Bridges, & Beck, 1997a) which is manifested by concerns related to career, physical rehabilitation, social interactions, further injury, and return to prior performance levels (Gould et al., 1997; Tracey, 2003)