The GAA is to conduct a pilot study into injuries sustained by footballers and hurlers. Organised under the aegis of Croke Park, the study will be the first major investigation into player injury undertaken by the association.

Prof Niall Moyna of DCU, a member of the task force on player burn-out, says the initiative will be very important in coping with injuries in the future.

"We have no evidence of prevalent injuries and as soon as a data base can be established we can develop preventative strategies. I'm waiting for someone to say about burn-out: 'what's the evidence for this? We've no data'. The problem is we don't have adequate research within on this important subject although the GAA is full of anecdotal evidence.

"At the moment we don't even know what are the most common injuries. The study is being co-ordinated by Dublin physio John Murphy (chartered physiotherapist and member of the GAA's medical committee) and will be conducted over the course of a year with computers and software to develop a data base on a weekly basis using statistics and graphs.

"This should be worthwhile information and I would be very optimistic that in time the study can go nationwide."

The lack of such information means there is no clear picture of the dangers and vulnerabilities facing players. Even in relation to something like the apparent rise in the incidence of cruciate ligament injuries, Moyna says there isn't sufficient research to shed light on the matter.

Again anecdotally, there is plenty to suggest that the injury has become increasingly common with Armagh footballers currently with four players laid up because of the condition. "My first thought," says Moyna, "is that one of the reasons we hear more about it is that it is now properly diagnosed. In the past there wasn't the same expertise in sports science and this led to non-specific diagnosis, such as "knee injury".

"But I would also enter a caveat on the grounds that we don't have the empirical data to tell us what the figures are so precisely gauging the level of increase is impossible.

"This could be the equivalent of the complaint that kick passing has gone out of football when studies conducted here by Paul Casey, Eoin Lennon and before them Bryan Cullen indicate that judged over a period from 1970 to 2004, there is actually just as much kick passing, so I'm wary of saying that the prevalence of cruciate injuries has increased.

"I'm not saying it hasn't but we have no way of knowing for sure. I spoke to Dr Pat O'Neill (former Dublin manager and chair of the task force) and he said that he had heard Graeme Souness (the soccer manager) talking about how boots used to flex from back to front but that now they flex from side to side, which gives the player less stability and protection.

"My own view is that there is more likely to be an influence from players lining out for multiple teams and doing different work with each of them: peak training, maybe, for the Sigerson Cup and stamina training with the county. This constitutes interference by one programme in another and no appropriate recovery, which stresses ligaments and tendons."

Coincidentally a smaller-scale study into injuries in football was published last month by the British Journal of Sports Medicine. A six-month prospective study of injury in Gaelic football (F Wilson, S Caffrey, E King, K Casey, C Gissane) came to the conclusion that: "Gaelic footballers are under considerable risk of injury. Greater efforts must be made to reduce this risk so that players miss less time from sport due to injury.

"Risk factors for injury in Gaelic football must now be investigated so that specific interventions may be established to reduce them."

Eighty three players were surveyed over six months and among the interesting findings of the study was that the rate of injury to players is 13.5 per 1,000 hours of football.

Nearly twice as many injuries (64 per cent to 36) take place during a match rather than in training and the ankle is the most commonly injured part of the anatomy (13 per cent) followed by the thigh (12 per cent), with lower-body injuries occurring in 71 per cent of the cases under review.

The tackle was the most common mechanism (28 per cent) of injury with 10 per cent of those making the tackle and the balance being tackled.

The second half was the more common period for injury and there was no major statistical difference between the playing positions in terms of sustaining injury.