North Queensland Toyota Cowboys’ medical staff have lent their unique knowledge and insight into sports injury rehabilitation in a new American textbook.
Townsville orthopaedic surgeon John Maguire – who has operated on injured Cowboys players for the past 14 years – and club physio Steven Sartori have contributed material for a chapter in Orthopaedic Rehabilitation: Getting Back in the Game, by leading American surgeon Matt Provencher.
Using real-life case studies and photos of Cowboys players completing injury prevention programs, the chapter taps into the Cowboys’ expertise in facilitating the return to the field of players post-injury.
Maguire said Provencher – who works with NFL team the New England Patriots – was interested in using Maguire and Sartori’s unique insights into managing and preventing injuries on teams with smaller rosters as compared to teams with much larger lists, as is the case in the US.
“The injury profile in rugby league is very high compared to most other sports so I think his (Provencher’s) thoughts were if there were so many injuries (in rugby league), we must have a fair bit of experience in dealing with them,” he said.
“He saw it as our expertise in getting players back on to the field as being our specialty.”
The Cowboys currently have preventative strategies in place for shoulder and knee injuries, something that Sartori said was reflective of modern-day approaches in sports science.
“Around the knee, in particular, and the shoulder, there’s been quite a large amount of research and programming to preventative-type interventions,” he said.
