Limping to Success – Sports Injury Treatment

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After a recent football injury, Journalist Ross McDonald attended Chartered Physiotherapist Owen Threadgold at The Physio Company’s Temple Bar clinic. His treatment with Owen ensured he’s now firmly back on the playing field…

I’m not much of a runner. I don’t understand how people do it, let alone
enjoy it. It is monotonous and boring. I will, however, chase a ball with all the
wide-eyed abandon of a three-year-old, with probably as much skill too. It was while
doing this, at flat-out pace, on unforgiving astro turf, that I went over on my ankle, all the way back in June. I acutely remember the snap I heard as I stamped the side of my foot into the ground where the sole should have been. I remember being afraid to look down at the stump I assumed I would see, with my detached foot left 20 yards back on the pitch. Thankfully, the injury wasn’t quite so dramatic, but the ligament I had snapped seemed just as painful. Nevertheless, I didn’t want to add insult to my injury spending the weekend pointlessly waiting in A&E. And since I have more faith in time as a healer than the health service, I decided to leave it to the former to sort out.

What followed was three and a half painful months, not just because of my ankle, but
because it was a World Cup summer and I  couldn’t kick a ball throughout, made even
more exasperating by the standard of football on show. Had I been able to walk, I’m sure I
could have started for half the teams who qualified. Then, as I made my tentative
return to the training pitch, gingerly limping around and grimacing whenever I kicked the
ball, I finally admitted I should probably get some physiotherapy.

The Physio Company is Ireland’s largest private chartered physiotherapy and sports
injury provider with 14 climes in Ireland. It is in its Temple Bar clinic, tucked away on
Meeting House Square, that I meet chartered physiotherapist Owen Threadgold, whose
speciality is rugby – a sport in which the aim is for huge men to collide with other huge men – so he has seen it all. After a very thorough examination of my dodgy ankle (and my good
one) he seems to know exactly what the problem is, and exactly what we need to do to
fix it. ‘So what sport brings in the most victims?’ I ask, a little more high-pitched than I’d planned, as he finds a sensitive tendon in my foot I didn’t even know I had. While rugby and football constantly cause injury, and skiing and marathon running start to increase now as we enter their seasons, the most dangerous sport is… office work. ‘Ninety per cent of our clients this week have bad necks and backs. People are hunched over their computers, working 13, 14 hours a day,’ Owen tells me.

After just three sessions, my ankle feels like it is approaching 100 per cent. While I’m happily back playing football, to get me back to pre-injury condition, Owen insists I keep up the exercises he has given me. If I don’t, my progress could start going backwards. I fully intend to, but as I mentioned earlier, if I’m not chasing a ball I quickly get bored. Better keep his card on me just in case.

Source: Ross McDonald, Metro Herald