Women's Footballer ACL Tsunami

To a footballer an Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL) injury can be career ending and over the past 12 months women footballer seem to be particularly affected with high profile players Leah Williamson, Emma Watson, Beth Meade and Vivianne Miedema suffering the injury in the past few months and
Scotland midfielder Caroline Weir rupturing her anterior cruciate ligament playing for her country on Tuesday.
Knee Surgeon Nev Davies has said that there had been a tsunami of cases in the women's game at all levels and women are up to six times more likely to have an ACL injury than male counterparts and research shows that there is a link between menstrual cycles and ACL injuries in women's football.
Biologists point to protein synthesis and degradation where Estrogen in the Ligament tissue alter's its mechanical properties, degrading and weakening the tissue leading to a more likely rupture and it being weakest during the menstrual cycle, particularly Day 1 and 2.
On the eve of the Women's Super League kicking off, a report by the Athletic Medical Journey found that of 37 female athletes with recent ACL injuries who participated in the study, 26 were either menstruating or had just stopped at the time of the injury and had heightened serum estrogen and progesterone in
their saliva.
They concluded that ACL injuries occurred most frequently on days 1 and 2 of menses, suggesting that ACL injury is not random but occurs more often around the time of menses, when circulating sex-hormone levels are low and after a time when both Estrogen and Progesterone were elevated.
Not sure what this means for female footballers or how this information can be used to avoid a serious injury but it is something which will hopefully be used by Clubs to manage their female players.