GAA and hurling injuries: common ones and typical recovery times

Injuries in Gaelic games

Gaelic football, hurling, camogie and ladies football are fast, high-intensity games full of sprinting, jumping, landing and sharp changes of direction, with a fair bit of contact on top. That mix shapes the injuries players pick up. The good news is that Irish researchers have been tracking GAA injuries for years, so we know a lot about which ones are most common.

This page pulls together what that research says, injury by injury, and links to our full guide for each one. The recovery ranges live in those guides. Every timeframe there is a typical range, an estimate rather than a promise, and the decision to go back to training or matches is made with your physio, surgeon or club medic.

InjuryLog is made in Ireland. We’re independent: this page isn’t produced with, or endorsed by, the GAA, the LGFA or the Camogie Association.

How injuries happen in Gaelic games

• Mostly legs, mostly soft tissue. The GAA’s National GAA Injury Database, run with UCD Physiotherapy on inter-county teams, found over 75% of injuries are to the lower limbs, and most are to muscles, ligaments and tendons. It also found two-thirds of players get injured in a season, a third have more than one injury, and a quarter of injuries are recurrences of old ones.
• Mostly non-contact. About two-thirds of injuries in the database happened without contact, most often when sprinting, jumping and landing, or planting and cutting to change direction. In elite hurling, a separate study found 38.6% of injuries came from contact with another player, 24.5% from sprinting and 13.7% from landing.
• Matches are where the risk is. In elite Gaelic football, a four-season study recorded 61.86 injuries per 1,000 hours of match play against 4.05 per 1,000 hours of training. In elite hurling, the figures were 61.75 and 2.99, making match injury risk about 20 times higher than in training.
• Time out. In elite Gaelic football, 86% of injuries kept players out for more than a week. In elite hurling, the median time out for injuries that settled within the season was 12 days, ranging from 2 to 127 days.

Most of this research comes from inter-county and college players, so club and underage patterns may differ.

The common GAA injuries

Camogie and ladies football: what we know

Much less research has been done on female Gaelic games players than on men, and a 2022 review found there was no injury-rate data at all for elite ladies football. What does exist points the same way as the men’s games:

• Camogie: an in-season study of elite inter-county camogie players found 71.4% of injuries were to the lower limbs, with the thigh (23.8%), knee (19.0%) and ankle (9.5%) most often affected. Match injury rates were 26.4 per 1,000 hours against 4.2 in training. It was a small study (62 players, 21 injuries), so treat the detail with care. Camogie helmets are compulsory, as in hurling.
• Camogie survey: in a national survey where camogie players at all levels reported their own injuries, knee ligament damage was the most traumatic injury reported, at 21% of all injuries.
• Ladies football: in a study of college players, hamstring injuries were the most common (21.5%), followed by the knee (12.7%), quads (11.4%) and ankle (10.3%), and knee injuries caused the most time out.

Preventing GAA injuries

The GAA15 warm-up

The GAA15 is a 15-minute injury prevention warm-up developed by the GAA’s Medical, Scientific and Welfare Committee with UCD Physiotherapy, using findings from the National GAA Injury Database. It has 3 sections and 19 exercises: slow running drills; strength, balance, jumping and landing and hamstring work; and sport-specific movements with planting and cutting. The GAA says it should be done at the start of each training session, with only the running parts before matches, and its first testing in college players showed better landing technique. The GAA publishes the exercises on its learning site.

Does it reduce injuries? One study of college Gaelic games players found fewer injuries over a season in teams that used the GAA15 than in teams using their usual warm-up, mostly in training rather than in matches. It wasn’t a randomised trial, and the authors say a randomised trial is needed to confirm the effect.

Protective equipment

In hurling and camogie, a helmet with a facial guard meeting the IS:355 standard is compulsory. Hand protection (gloves or ash guards) is available but not mandatory, and research suggests few players wear it.

Planning your way back

Each guide above gives the typical recovery range for that injury, and our return to sport calculator can help you map out a rough timeline. Every range is an estimate, not a promise: how quickly you get back depends on the injury, its severity and how your rehab goes. The decision on when you return to training and matches is made with your physio, surgeon or club medic.