In the first three weekends of the current WSL season, there were three anterior cruciate (ACL) injuries announced by clubs across the league, each on a different weekend: first Everton’s Aurora Galli, and then Everton’s Inma Gabarro, followed most recently by Liverpool midfielder Sofie Lundgaard.

Lundgaard was ruled out with the injury after their match against Tottenham Hotspur, adding to a list of twelve players (including Chelsea’s Sophie Ingle, West Ham’s Jess Ziu and Crystal Palace loanee Jorja Fox) currently ruled out through ACL injuries in the WSL.

This time last year 18-year-old Manchester United midfielder Emma Watson was one of those confined to the sidelines after rupturing her ACL on international duty in September 2023, just a month after signing for the club.

“When it first happened, I knew I’d done something to my knee, but my initial thought wasn’t ACL. My initial thought was, ‘Oh my God, I can’t play tomorrow night,’” the Watson tells She’s A Baller.

“Later that night, I found out that I’d completely ruptured my ACL, along with some other problems in my knee. For the next two hours, after hearing that information, I just completely shut down. I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t talk. I was crying.”

The term ‘ACL’ refers to a band of tissue connecting the thigh bone to the shin bone. It runs diagonally through the inside of the knee to provide stability. A tear to this ligament often requires surgery with recovery taking up to 12 months.

The spike in incidents has motivated Watson to document her own journey to recovery on social media with the hopes that those who follow feel less alone.

“It’s really important to raise awareness of ACL injuries and give an insight into the recovery process that we go through every day, like our feelings. I hope that it can help the next young girl, the next player that then goes through that injury,” she explained.

“I went into it a bit blind and not too sure how hard it was really going to be, how much pain I was going to be in, what the challenges were going to be. I’d seen girls go through this process, but they’re in the gym doing their work while I’m on the pitch training.

Media interest and pledges for more research did increase during a spate of high-profile injuries, including Spanish Ballon d’Or winner Alexia Putellas, Arsenal forward Beth Mead and Manchester City forward Vivianne Miedema in 2022.

While initial outrage seems to have dissipated, the injuries have not stopped. Instead of the shock factor that surrounded the aforementioned instances, the mood seems to be an increasing resignation to next the inevitable announcement.

The issue is not confined to England’s top tier as just last Wednesday, the NWSL’s Washington Spirit announced Andi Sullivan had suffered an ACL, while the Championship’s Blackburn Rovers made an identical announcement about Grace Riglar two days later.

The prevalence of the injury meant for Watson, it was a very real fear even before she had experienced it herself.

“For myself, it was always a fear of mine. I played with people that had gone through the injury. In the back of my head, I had this feeling, this fear that it might happen to me,” she says.

However, the “silver lining” appeared in the bonding opportunity it provided with the United teammates she rehabbed with, 27-year-old defender Gabby George and 19-year-old defender Jess Simpson.

“I don’t think I could have gotten through it without them. Our relationships have grown a lot closer because we’ve seen the good days., we’ve seen the bad days and we’ve seen the in-between. There’s just this special bond that we have now,” Watson reflects.

“It’s terrible that they had to also go through that injury, but we’d always lift each other up. If people were feeling a bit down that day, there were always people I could talk to.”

The latest spate of ACL injuries comes amid increasing criticism of a packed schedule with Miedema and former Arsenal manager Jonas Eidevall both separately speaking out. Arsenal will play five games in 15 days during October.

It is part of a broader overload in women’s football that has seen a major international tournament every summer since 2020 if you include the Olympics, with little let up as Euro 2025 approaches.

“We don’t know the main cause of an ACL injury. There’s talk about it being the menstrual cycle. There’s talk about it being overload. Sometimes it just happens in a tackle and you can’t do anything about it,” says Watson.

“I think it’s about prevention. What can we do as players, clubs and individuals to help prevent this injury? Warming up properly, doing strength exercises, balancing work, and just doing everything we can to prevent these injuries from happening.”

For now, prevention may well be the only way forward before long-term research can even begin to provide answers to answer the inevitable why. Most importantly, player welfare must be prioritised so weekly announcements do not become an accepted part of the game.