Linda Fettus
Academy Lead Physiotherapist
Linda has an active passion for football medicine having experience with Northern Ireland over 4 years as Academy Lead Physiotherapist being boosted to the 1st teams and progressing on to English Premiership positions. Linda has a particular interest in return to sport and sporting performance. She is now currently working at a premiership club and involved in researching ‘Injuries in Elite Football’ at the prestigious Liverpool John Moores University. She is actively recruiting teams in the women’s game. She has lectured at other institutions for Sports Medicine Modules, hosts educational workshops and works interactively with the MDT to support players.
CASE STUDY
Demands of elite football are high, requiring performance and backroom staff to apply and execute appropriate rehabilitation to facilitate return to play. Players are required to perform high speed change of direction including accelerations and decelerations with a combined effort of intensities. In surveillance studies, it has been demonstrated that there can be more than 1300 changes of direction performed. The physical ability to change direction efficiently allows for marginal gains in competition that can be crucial in responding to the unpredictable game-environments. This includes when a team is in possession, out of possession or performing an efficient reaction response to opponents. These abilities to respond to internal and external loads/forces create game changing performances impacting on results! The importance of COD in rehabilitation is key in enforcing good movement strategies in pre-planned drills progressing to reactive agility-based drills facilitating the accels, decels and varied intensities.