Fiona Brown: My hope that Project ACL will help protect our bodies and careers

About the author
After suffering four ACL injuries throughout her career, Scottish international Fiona Brown announced last week that the 2024/25 season would be her last in professional football. The 30-year-old has played professionally in Scotland and Sweden, representing her country in both its European Championship and World Cup debuts in 2017 and 2019 respectively.

By Fiona Brown

I was just 16 when I suffered my first ACL injury in 2012, and there was a naivety to the way I perceived it. I was in a lot of pain. I knew I had to have surgery. But I just thought: okay – let’s do this, get better and then come back. I had no idea of the potential consequences for my game.

I was clueless.

By the time I suffered my fourth ACL tear in 2024, I was wise enough to know that it had to be my last. I was devastated. I had just moved home to play for Glasgow City again and was surrounded by friends, family and my boyfriend. I genuinely couldn’t have been happier in my life. Then, suddenly, it was game over. 

I now know that an injury like that completely changes the next 12 months of your life as a player and, as much as I would work to recover from this one, I knew I couldn’t risk a fifth tear. I’ve asked so much of my body over the years; it has come through injuries, surgeries and rehab better and stronger each time, and I just can’t push it to the point that it can no longer do it.

I am an active person in my thirties, and as much as I love football, I don’t want to be in chronic pain for the rest of my life because I just couldn’t let go at the right time. The rewards throughout my career have been incredible: I’ve lifted trophies with my clubs and made history at major tournaments with my country. Those are moments that I could only have dreamed of as a young girl.

Unfortunately, after 16 years, I’ve got to the point where the reward wouldn’t be worth the risk anymore. As hard as it is, retiring is the right decision for me.

ACL injuries seem to be in the spotlight more and more, especially in the women’s game, and it’s so important to know as much as we can so we can assess the risk and try to limit the injuries. You can’t eradicate elite injury from sport, but hopefully research like Project ACL can help us understand why it happens, giving players the best chances to avoid tears completely where possible and where not possible, offer the most effective rehabilitation.

So many players’ careers are affected by ACL injuries, but the process is different for each of us. It’s such a multifaceted process that it’s difficult to pinpoint any one thing that might have caused the issues multiple times for one person, never mind applying that theory across the board.

It is so important that research will be women-focused, as our bodies, alignment and recovery are so different from men that I don’t think you can simply apply your findings from one gender to another.

Project ACL is a brilliant undertaking, and I think it's probably given people a lot of hope that we might have access to tangible evidence that will protect our bodies and careers. There’s no player that I know, that if you told them they had to work harder or take certain steps to reduce their risk of an ACL, that wouldn’t put the effort in. We just don’t know which direction to focus on yet.

Although I’ve been unlucky to have as many injuries as I have, I count myself fortunate to have always been surrounded by really good people who have supported me. At the end of the day, though, the only person that can make the rehabilitation work is you – you’re in it alone, and that’s a bit scary.

The process can be isolating; you go from being an essential part of the team’s plans, to training alone as you try to build your strength back. You can really get inside your own head but, through all my experiences of being injured, I realised that this isn’t the worst place to be.

I was the only person that could make a difference to my situation, and mentally I pushed myself to be stronger than I ever thought I could be. Instead of feeling sorry for myself, I focused on how I could use this setback to help the team in other ways. Physically I wasn’t as able, but I had the chance to take a step back at training and watch our play, observe my team-mates in the run up to the game, take note of people that were maybe struggling and needed someone to pick them up.

I tried to be that person whenever I could, and the energy I poured into that always came back to me and helped me put a positive spin on things. Although I couldn’t be on the pitch, I still played a role during my recovery that helped me grow stronger not just as a player, but as a team-mate.