The PFA Residential Rehabilitation Scheme (sidebar feature)

A sidebar explaining the PFA Residential Rehabilitation Scheme, through which more than 750 registered players have benefited since the partnership began three years earlier, many of them PFA members from FA WSL 1 clubs. Each week up to eight players stay on site at the Hilton at St George’s Park, selected on a purely clinical basis according to need and able to apply for up to three separate weeks, receiving four days of specialist bespoke assessment, treatment, rehabilitation and conditioning advice in Perform’s Human Performance Lab, gym, hydrotherapy suite and out on the fields. The piece argues that beyond world-class facilities and top clinicians, the change of scene, the company of fellow players and the break from well-meaning questions all provide an emotional and psychological boost to recovery.