Hull KR head of performance gives insight into club's lack of injuries

Hull Kingston Rovers' success last season was based a lot on consistency, including with team selection - due to there being relatively minimal injuries.

It is a subject that head coach Willie Peters is cautious about in press conferences, knowing that - in a sport like rugby league - that can easily change. But the fact that so many important players played for such long periods together was important in their run to the Grand Final.

Dan Ramsden is head of performance at the club, a role that he stepped up to after Peters' arrival, having previously been head physio for eight years. He oversees training session content from a physical point of view, as well as related areas such as strength and conditioning and nutrition.

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Ramsden said: "I've worked with some great coaches, some really experienced coaches, so I like to feel that I have taken little parts from my time working with all of those. I pride myself in injury prevention and how we keep the team durable and in a good position.

"We all know that rugby league is a physical, high energy contact sport so injuries are part and parcel of the game. There's definitely a lot of luck involved in it. But I think there are several factors that have probably made us successful over the past year.

"The first one probably is our intensity of training. We feel like throughout our training, all the way through pre-season last year, we prepared the players to be in optimal, game-ready condition so they can cope with the physical demands of the game better. That also comes down to the amount of contact work that we do, which primes players for the collisions in games.

"And a lot in rugby league comes down to consistency - if you keep players on the field, they tend to be more durable. The longer they are on the field, they tend to become more robust to a degree. And if you are consistent with your team, and you've got people playing in position, they don't tend to do things they are either not used to doing or they don't have to work harder to cover other people's jobs.

"If you are more physically dominant in a game then you pick up less injuries. If you are getting dominated and beat every week, I know what it's like - this is my 10th year and I know what it's like when you are having tough, physical games every week, you pick up niggles, you pick up injuries. If you don't match that in your training, and you are not primed and ready for that, then you break down in games."

Discussing management of injuries, he said: "We are pretty structured with our approach to injuries. I'd like to think we have got a great team in place. And that shows with our re-injury rates as well. When we do get an injury, they come back and they are in prime condition really.

"We are a very data driven department, whether that's GPS units players wear or testing stuff in the gym that we do or things that we pick up in research. With the GPS units that players wear, we are very strict about keeping a close eye on exactly what the players are doing, not necessarily to a degree where we are pulling them back all the time but making sure we are pushing them as well.

"It's about building the players' tolerance up to certain demands of the game. If we are pulling back players all the time, the games are going to be more difficult, so we just need to make sure we are consistent with the exposure our players are getting in training so they become robust for games.

"We pull in data from the medical side, the sport science side, to give us a bigger overall picture so we can make informed decisions."

Ramden sits down with Peters and his assistant coaches, David Hodgson and Danny Ward, to plan sessions and the head of performance says "things flow really well because of our communication levels". He has a large staff to work with, with the team including Jim McDaniel as head of strength and conditioning, Calum Christopherson also in strength and conditioning, and Dave Cooper as lead physio who took over when Ramsden vacated that role.

Players can come to Ramsden to discuss the condition they are in. "That's something we try to instil in our culture," he says. "We work hard, players buy in and put the effort in, but we know that if a player is coming to us and they are telling us they are sore or hurt we know we can trust them and we listen to them. But it comes back to our monitoring - usually when that happens, we are already aware that it's going to happen.

"We pride ourselves on world class effort and we've got numerous people in this squad who hit that. To play the sport, and especially to play it how we play the game, you have to have those characteristics."

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