Objective To examine the match injury profile of professional rugby union players by individual playing position.

Design 4-season prospective cohort design.

Setting 14 English Premiership clubs.

Participants 899 professional players.

Main outcome measure Incidence of match injury (recorded as the number of injuries/1000 player-hours of match exposure), severity of injury (recorded as the number of days of absence) and days of absence due to injury per 1000 player-hours of match exposure.

Assessment of risk factors Injury diagnosis and individual playing position during a match.

Results 2484 injuries were reported. While there were no significant differences in the total days of absence as a result of injury between different positions in the forwards and the backs, there were a number of significant differences in injury profile for players in individual playing positions. Although three common body locations caused a high proportion of days of absence due to match injury for forwards (shoulder, knee, ankle/heel) and backs (shoulder, hamstring, knee), there were significant differences in injury profile between individual positions.

Conclusions The results clearly demonstrate the need for individual position-specific injury-prevention programmes in rugby union. When devising such programmes, a player's previous injury history should also be taken into account.