Prolific Academic Publishing for ICMS’ Dr Trevor Clark

“When you have played sport, coached sport, and taught sport professionally for over 35 years, what’s left to do? You research sport, of course.”

Dr Trevor Clark, Dean (Undergraduate) at ICMS has built a career around his passion for sport performance that has seen him earn Honours, Masters and Doctoral degrees with majors in exercise physiology, sport psychology and public health. Dr Clark played 275 professional games of rugby league in England (1983-1995) for Leeds, Featherstone, and Bradford. He has coached and led high- performance programs in both rugby league (NRL) and rugby union (NPC), and he also holds the highest-level industry qualifications with the Australian Strength Conditioning Association and Exercise Sport Science Australia.

His research journey has taken him all over the world presenting in places like Kenya, London, Cardiff, Sydney, and New Zealand. He is a proud Kiwi of Waikato-Tainui descent originally from Hamilton.

Dr Clark’s main area of interest is focused on improving sport performance and on reducing sporting injuries and investigating mechanisms of injury. In recent years Trevor has been involved with several concussion papers in contact sport. His doctoral thesis was the first health study looking specifically at Māori players retired from competitive rugby league participation.

The following are a sample of the 2021/2020 Peer Reviewed Journal Articles published by Dr Clark where ICMS is credited.

* Journal of Orthopaedic Research and Surgery 2(2) (2021): Impacts to the Head in a Premier One Domestic Netball Team Measured with a Wireless Head Impact Sensor Over a Domestic Competition Season: An Exploratory Analysis.
Authors: King, D, Hume, P, Gissane, C, and Clark, T.

The article sought to determine the exposure to sub-concussive and concussive head injuries during amateur women’s netball. Eleven female amateur netball players were monitored during a netball season with X2 accelerometers for impact exposures above 10g and the King-Devick test for neuropsychological outcomes. The clinical concussion rate was recorded.

Although the game of netball is considered a non-contact sport it is evident from data presented in this study that players can experience significant head impacts capable of causing clinical concussion. For example, amateur netball players recorded an average of three impacts to the head per-player per-match. It was also found that the players experience repetitive head impacts in excess of sub-concussive thresholds. Impact frequency and magnitude are player position dependent.

* Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport 24 (2021): Training injury incidence in an amateur women’s rugby union team in New Zealand over two consecutive seasons.
Authors: D. King, P.A. Hume, T. Clark, A. Foskett, and M.J. Barnes.

The article sought to describe the training injury incidence in amateur women’s rugby union in New Zealand over two consecutive seasons.

The relative lack of studies on women’s rugby-15s training injuries was the catalyst for this study to report the incidence, site, type, and timing of injuries over two consecutive competition seasons of an amateur women’s team in New Zealand. It was found that the time-loss training injury incidence in amateur women’s rugby union in New Zealand was higher than that reported for national and international injury incidences.

* Research Article in Advances in Orthopaedics and Sports Medicine (2020): Concussion Reporting and Return to Play over Two Years for an Amateur Women’s Rugby Union Team in New Zealand.
Authors: Doug King, Patria A Hume, Trevor N Clark, Karen Hind, and Natalie Hardaker.

The article sought to quantify injury reporting and return to play in an amateur women’s rugby union teams in New Zealand. It found that concussion reporting and safe return to play after concussion diagnosis needs to be improved for amateur women’s rugby union in New Zealand.

* Journal of the Neurological Sciences (2020): Use of the King-Devick test for the identification of concussion in an amateur domestic women’s rugby union team over two competition seasons in New Zealand.
Authors: D. King, P.A. Hume, T.N. Clark, and A.J. Pearce.

The article sought to investigate the use of the King-Devick (K-D) test for side-line assessment of concussive injuries in a New Zealand amateur women’s rugby union team.

This study has provided additional evidence to support the use of the K-D Test as a frontline method of assessing concussion in female rugby players with good to excellent reliability of the test for baseline, side-line assessment and post-season evaluation.

The King-Devick Test is a two-minute rapid number naming assessment in which an in individual quickly reads aloud single digit numbers and evaluates impairments of eye movements, attention, and language function in relation to the presence or absence of concussion. ^#

^#Source: https://kingdevicktest.com/

*Research Article Advances in Orthopaedics and Sports Medicine (2020):  Incidence of Match Injuries in an Amateur Women’s Rugby Union Team in New Zealand over Two Consecutive Seasons.
Authors: Doug King, Patria A Hume, Trevor N Clark, Andrew Foskett, and Matthew Barnes.

The article sought to determine whether amateur women’s rugby union teams in New Zealand need injury prevention support, by providing evidence as to the incidence, causes and severity of injuries that occur during match participation.

It found that the injury incidence of amateur women’s rugby in New Zealand is more than double than male rugby for both the total and time-loss injury incidence. This study highlights the need for injury prevention support for amateur women’s rugby union teams in New Zealand given the incidence of injuries.