The growing number of injuries in Nyasa Big Bullets and Be Forward Wanderers\u2019 camps has reached 15, with the Blantyre rivals faulting congested fixtures for the injuries.<\/p>\n
In 14 days, Bullets have played against Blue Eagles, Azam Tigers twice and this weekend against Dwangwa United and Mafco whereas Wanderers have met Kamuzu Barracks twice, Blue Eagles, Epac, Prison United [today] and Mzuni [tomorrow] in that period.<\/p>\n
Bullets and Wanderers, whose fixtures piled up after they contributed more players to the national team\u2019s recent engagements in Namibia and Zimbabwe, are playing a game in every three days, sometimes two in back-to-back games when away.<\/p>\n
In top football leagues, a team plays once a week, partly because they have the luxury of venues with some games staged at night and midweek. Local facilities do not have flood lights. There is also a shortage of venues. There are six venues serving 15 Super League teams, national teams, youth and women\u2019s football teams.<\/p>\n
Bullets Vice General Secretary, Kelvin Moyo, said eight of his team\u2019s first choice players sustained injuries upon returning from Namibia on Flames\u2019 Cosafa Cup engagements.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have played too many games within a short period of time. This has resulted in player burn-out which has made our players prone to injuries. It is just too much,\u201d Moyo explained.<\/p>\n
Bullets captain, Chiukepo Msowoya, admitted that it was tough playing many games, but the footballers have no choice.<\/p>\n
Wanderers\u2019 General Secretary, Mike Butao, said his team was forced to play four matches in eight days resulting in injuries.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur medical personnel have also blamed the worn out artificial turf at the Kamuzu Stadium for players\u2019 injuries but we have also noted that too many games are doing us great harm,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Wanderers have eight players injured with five of them down with groin problems, one an ankle and the other a knee problem.<\/p>\n
Wanderers\u2019 Team Doctor, Enock Mwale, gave a new dimension to the injuries suggesting that insufficient rehabilitation of injuries and Kamuzu Stadium\u2019s worn-out artificial turf might be worsening the injuries.<\/p>\n
\u201cOf course, it is not something that has been scientifically proven but these two teams train from Tuesday to Friday at the stadium then play actual games on the same pitch whose surface is now very hard. It is now like a slab covered with a carpet,\u201d Mwale said.<\/p>\n
Kamuzu Stadium Manager, Ambilike Mwaugulu, yesterday admitted that \u201cthere is a little element of hardness on the pitch but we have scheduled maintenance during the mid-season break at the end of August.\u201d<\/p>\n
Football Association of Malawi (Fam) Competitions and Media Manager, Gomezgani Zakazaka, is on record to have said the two teams would be put on a crash programme for them to catch up with others.<\/p>\n
Sulom General Secretary, Williams Banda, recently said it was tough having league fixtures due to cup and national team engagements, adding that there is need to plan technically and administratively.<\/p>\n
Karonga United coach, Kondwani Mwalweni, and Kamuzu Barracks\u2019 assistant coach, Ted Kalinda, separately, also complained about the crammed fixtures.<\/p>\n
Results of European Union Football Association (Uefa) ongoing study indicates that playing too many matches can lead to player fatigue, which may result in injuries especially to muscles.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe fixtures constitute almost one third of all time-loss injuries in men\u2019s professional football, and 92 percent of all injuries affect the four big muscle groups in the lower limbs. Hamstring muscle injury is the most common single injury, probably reflecting the velocity of elite level football,\u201d reads the results of the study published on www. zeitschrift-sportmedizin.de\/en.<\/p>\n
A team with 25 players can expect an average of 15 muscle injuries per season, around 6-7 of them affecting the hamstrings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The growing number of injuries in Nyasa Big Bullets and Be Forward Wanderers\u2019 camps has reached 15, with the Blantyre rivals faulting congested fixtures for the injuries. In 14 days, Bullets have played against Blue Eagles, Azam Tigers twice and this weekend against Dwangwa United and Mafco whereas Wanderers have met Kamuzu Barracks twice, Blue […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":29896,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29894"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29894\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29897,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29894\/revisions\/29897"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29896"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}