Having witnessed one of the best summers of sport in a long time, watching first hand Ben Stoke’s performance in the Headingley Ashes test match to winning our first ever Cricket World Cup! We now get our next fix of sporting magic with the Rugby World Cup.

I have spent most of my life playing or watching Rugby. I started playing at the age of 6 and am lucky enough to say I only ever had one major injury and that was breaking my collar bone. This however is not the case for most players, since I qualified in 2007 I have been very fortunate to treat many elite rugby union and rugby league players from super league rugby teams, premiership rugby teams, England sevens and England 15’s players.

As many as 1 in 4 rugby players will be injured during the season. On average each player performs 20-40 tackles per match which leads to almost 25% of neck injuries occurring during the game.

With this in mind it is unsurprising but staggering that 57% of all rugby related injuries occurs during a match and half of these are when you are being tackled or doing the tackling. As you can image flankers and hookers are most at risk and obviously any one who has played knows forward’s sustain more injuries that back’s (dories’!).

Most, if not all, rugby players will have something wrong with their spine, I can honestly say I have never in my professional carrier met and spoke to a rugby player that has not had a niggle in their neck, mid or low back. With this in mind and with my love for rugby and generally all sports (and gym-goers), please come in for a check up. Most injuries occur at the start of the season so be pro active now and make sure your spine is up for the rest of the season.

Enjoy the World Cup and good luck to all the teams playing but let’s face I am only going to be singing ‘swing low’!