Injury Incidence, Severity and Burden Over Two Consecutive Seasons in French Elite Youth Rugby Players of Rugby Club Toulonnais

The RUBYS study is an observational closed cohort conducted over two consecutive competitive seasons (2024-2025 and 2025-2026) in youth rugby players from the RCT (Rugby Club Toulonnais) Association. It focuses on the epidemiology of rugby-related injuries in adolescents enrolled in a structured dual project (school and sport) in the Toulon metropolitan area.

Young players (boys and girls) aged approximately 13 to 18 years, licensed in the RCT Association from the U14 category upwards, benefit from adapted school timetables and regular supervised training sessions. These athletes are monitored medically by the Sports Medicine and Traumatology Unit (UMTS) of the Centre Hospitalier Intercommunal Toulon - La Seyne sur Mer (CHITS), under the responsibility of the principal investigator. All injuries requiring medical consultation are routinely recorded in the Askamon software, which centralizes clinical information, exposure data and follow-up for each player.

The study does not modify usual care and does not introduce any additional medical procedures beyond those required for standard injury management. When an injury occurs, the player is assessed and treated according to usual practice (club doctor, attending physician or emergency services, with referral to specialists and use of imaging or surgery if needed). Information regarding the type of injury, anatomical location, circumstances, and days lost from rugby is recorded as part of routine clinical documentation and sports records (match sheets, training attendance registers), then entered into Askamon. No specific intervention, randomization or additional biological sampling is planned within the framework of this protocol.

For the purposes of the study, a pseudonymized extraction of Askamon will be performed and will include all players with at least one injury requiring medical consultation between August 1, 2024, and June 30, 2026. Each injury event will be considered as an observation, and multiple injuries in the same player will be analysed separately. The dataset will include demographic variables (age, sex), relevant medical history where available, detailed injury characteristics (diagnosis, lesion type, involved body region) and severity expressed as time-loss days until full return to competition. Injuries will be categorized according to international rugby consensus definitions (World Rugby/International Rugby Board [IRB]) to ensure comparability with existing literature.

Non-medical variables related to rugby participation will also be extracted: playing position (forwards or backs), competition category, context of occurrence (match versus training), match situation or training drill, recurrence, playing surface (natural or synthetic), type of competition, venue, period of the season, environmental conditions (temperature, weather), equipment (footwear condition) and perceived fatigue where available. These contextual factors will be used to explore potential modifiable risk factors and high-risk situations. The exposure denominator (player-hours) will be estimated from training and match schedules, attendance records and competition data provided by the RCT Association.