In my hometown, a professional footballer has recently sued a club doctor and his football club, alleging that the complications of a local anaesthetic injection given during a football match resulted in a permanent and career-ending injury. As a now-retired football club doctor (over 15 seasons), this news sends shivers up and down my spine. How many similar injections did I administer over my career? Too many to count I suspect. Regardless of the merits of the allegations made in this case, the issue is a very real and concerning one for sports physicians worldwide.

Although clinicians outside the realm of sports medicine are often critical of the treatment administered during professional sports events, few know or experience the reality. It seems that any doctors watching a televised professional sports event have a licence to comment publicly on what they may or may not have seen. I can still remember the vehement letter to the editor of a daily newspaper over the management of a supposedly concussed player who was allowed to continue playing that day having been carried off on a stretcher. When it was pointed out to the neurosurgical author concerned that the player was not …