‘Nothing has hit me that hard’: spate of ACL injuries highlights lack of A-League Women investment | A-League Women

Cannon Clough didn’t realise what had happened when she first hit the ground.

After leaping up to defend a high ball, the Central Coast Mariners defender felt a kick through her leg. As she landed, her foot went in one direction and her body in another. She heard a pop.

“I was like ‘oh, that was weird,’” Clough tells Guardian Australia. “I hadn’t been in the game for long at all, but the staff were like ‘you look really white’ and then I went into shock.

“At the time, they thought: no issues. Structurally, they thought it felt pretty good. But after a scan, they found it was an ACL and a meniscus tear. It was a shock for something so silly and simple to be the end of the season for me.”

When Clough received the news, she says, “it smacked me in the face.”

“I was so hopeful and so naive to think that it was just a MCL sprain. I’ve never faced an injury that keeps you out for as long as this one. Nothing has hit me that hard.”

Clough is one of seven A-League Women players who have suffered an anterior cruciate ligament tear during the 2025-26 season. In the past two weeks alone, four players – Clough, Sabitra Bhandari, Grace Kuilamu, and Isabella Coco-Di-Sipio – have sustained the injury.

There is currently no publicly available data tracking ACL injuries in the A-Leagues, nor any dedicated internal research exploring the circumstances of their occurrence.

That lack of information speaks to a global trend: despite the fact that women athletes are two to six times more likely than men to tear their ACLs, just 6% of all sports science research focuses on women’s bodies.

However, organisations such as the Michelle Kang-founded Kynisca and Fifpro, the global players’ union, are changing that.

Fifpro launched Project ACL, a multi-year initiative investigating ACL injuries in England’s Women’s Super League in 2024, with a focus on environmental factors such as access to facilities, staff, equipment, recovery, game schedules, and travel.

“The day-to-day conditions that players experience is sometimes ignored because attention on this topic often pivots to: ‘this is an ACL injury, therefore it’s medical’,” Dr Alex Culvin, director of women’s football at Fifpro, says. “What is overlooked, though, is the lack of holistic research done on conditions; the real quality control issue that we have in women’s football.

“The question for me is not: are there more or less ACL injuries nowadays? Instead, the question should be: what are the conditions in which this is occurring? It’s not the regularity that’s the sole problem – it’s the lack of understanding of how it occurs, why it occurs, and how we better protect the wellbeing of players.”

For Clough and her Mariners teammate, Taren King, who returned from her own ACL injury last season, the condensed schedule of ALW matches during the holidays combined with the summer temperatures, increased travel, and lack of appropriate off-field support could explain the recent surge in injuries.

Additionally, the league’s part-time structure means players aren’t afforded the same rest time as fully-professional footballers, with training and recovery squeezed in around other work commitments.

For an injury that can take more than 12 months to heal, a 32-week contract often leaves players fending for themselves.

“The darkest days are when you feel you’re on your own,” King says. “You don’t really have anyone to lean on, getting out of bed to go and do your rehab is tough because there’s no one there making sure you do it.

“I don’t feel like I’ve recovered from the games around Christmas time, and it’s now the middle of January. It’s tough, and I don’t think you can point to any one thing, but all of them combined feels like it increases risk.”

It’s why King and Clough, alongside the entire playing cohort, are calling for the league to become full-time as of next season: because with more investment comes more research that can help prevent major injuries and sustain the careers of Australia’s best women footballers.

“If we’re full-time, hopefully it means the staff will be full-time too, which means they’re not spread too thin and you can actually get the care you need,” Clough says. “You don’t have to self-motivate or find ways to set it up yourself; it’s a structure that’s already set up for you, so you just show up to work and do your thing.

“It’s just making sure the engine, the athletes – the things that need to keep working – actually keep working. Otherwise the whole league suffers.”