A previous hamstring injury is the strongest signal we have for the next one. Across 78 studies and more than 71,000 athletes, any history of hamstring injury raised the risk 2.7 times; a recent one, 4.8 times [1]. A second injury in a season is rarely bad luck — it usually means the leg went back to playing without the strength and high-speed running capacity the game demands. That is what the programme rebuilds, before he plays again.

Clearance generally means the injury has healed. It is not a judgement that she is ready to play. Weeks out leave her deconditioned, and that does not come back on its own. International consensus treats return to sport as staged — return to participation, then to sport, then to performance — decided on what she can do, not on weeks elapsed [2]. In one two-year cohort, athletes who failed return-to-sport testing reinjured at 38% against 6% for those who passed [3]. A structured programme rebuilds her physical base before she goes back, not after.

He may not have hit his growth spurt. In youth soccer the link between maturity and 15 m sprint speed is trivial at under-11 and large by under-15, so a boy a year behind biologically looks slower for reasons unrelated to his ability [4]. He may also be doing no sprinting at all — very few community athletes do sprint technique work, or the strength work underneath it. Maturation can be estimated from height, sitting height and age [5], and the qualities that drive speed are straightforward to establish. Knowing where he sits on both usually explains the gap, and where the answer is training, training works.

Selection often comes down to four things — attitude, technical skill, tactical understanding, physical ability. Only the last is mine. Before assuming it is the problem: across English academies, players born in the first quarter of the selection year were over five times more likely to be selected than those born in the last [6], and in one national selection study the physical differences between selected and non-selected players vanished once maturity was accounted for [7]. Where the gap is physical, it breaks into parts — acceleration, deceleration, change of direction, top speed to name but a few — and the programme targets whichever one is holding her back.

Most community clubs are run by volunteers who played the sport themselves. Very few have a qualified strength and conditioning coach — not a criticism, just how community sport is resourced. I can write a programme built for them, which you can run independently of me, or I deliver face to face where practical.

1. Green B, Bourne MN, van Dyk N, Pizzari T. Recalibrating the risk of hamstring strain injury (HSI): a 2020 systematic review and meta-analysis of risk factors for index and recurrent hamstring strain injury in sport. Br J Sports Med. 2020;54(18):1081-1088. https://doi.org/10.1136/bjsports-2019-100983

2. Meredith SJ, Rauer T, Chmielewski TL, et al. Return to sport after anterior cruciate ligament injury: Panther Symposium ACL Injury Return to Sport Consensus Group. Knee Surg Sports Traumatol Arthrosc. 2020;28(8):2403-2414. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00167-020-06009-1

3. Grindem H, Snyder-Mackler L, Moksnes H, Engebretsen L, Risberg MA. Simple decision rules can reduce reinjury risk by 84% after ACL reconstruction: the Delaware-Oslo ACL cohort study. Br J Sports Med. 2016;50(13):804-808. https://doi.org/10.1136/bjsports-2016-096031

4. McCunn R, Weston M, Hill JKA, Johnston RD, Gibson NV. Influence of physical maturity status on sprinting speed among youth soccer players. J Strength Cond Res. 2017;31(7):1795-1801. https://doi.org/10.1519/JSC.0000000000001654

5. Mirwald RL, Baxter-Jones ADG, Bailey DA, Beunen GP. An assessment of maturity from anthropometric measurements. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2002;34(4):689-694. https://doi.org/10.1097/00005768-200204000-00020

6. Lovell R, Towlson C, Parkin G, Portas M, Vaeyens R, Cobley S. Soccer player characteristics in English lower-league development programmes: the relationships between relative age, maturation, anthropometry and physical fitness. PLoS One. 2015;10(9):e0137238. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0137238

7. Leyhr D, Rösch D, Cumming SP, Höner O. Selection-dependent differences in youth elite basketball players' relative age, maturation-related characteristics, and motor performance. Res Q Exerc Sport. 2024;95(3):775-788. https://doi.org/10.1080/02701367.2024.2311644