INTRODUCTION: Rugby Union has a relatively high injury rate in line with field-based full-contact sports. The injury rates are well studied in single seasons. The next progression of understanding would come from multi-season studies of injury rates. Multi-season studies must consider the effect of varying data collection practices over time. Changes across seasons can influence the comparability of data. We aimed to examine how modifications to data collection procedures influenced data quality and overall injury outcomes (injury incidence rates and injury severity) from surveillance over a 6-year period in Australian professional rugby. METHODS: Game sustained time-loss injuries were included in this study. The data were reported by all five Australian franchises in Super Rugby (2016-2021) using a common collection tool. Match exposure hours and injury incidence rate per 1000 player-game-hours are presented, alongside descriptions of key changes to data collection procedures. Main changes in the data collection procedures included the facilitation of support resources to the teams, discussions with the field practitioners on the objectives of the system and refining of the variables to collect. Injury severity was calculated as the number of days the player was unable to participate in the competition or/and training. RESULTS: There were 368 game sustained injuries in 195 players from 8229 player-game-hours. The match sustained injury incidence was 44.7 injuries per 1000 game hours, with a median severity of 31 (IQR±58) days missed per injury. The differences in injury incidence rates by season were notable with 12.8 injuries per 1000h in 2016, and 52.1 injuries per 1000h in 2018. This is credited to the increased engagement of the teams with the system as a result of the support resources and involvement of the field practitioners with the system, and the refinement of the variables collected. There was also a notable change in the median severity of injury in 2016 [median 66 (IQR±174) days] and 2018 [median 31 (IQR±48) days]. This is attributed to improved processing of injuries that are deemed to be recovered. CONCLUSION: Questions should be asked if the differences in severity and incidence across seasons are reasonable or if they are attributable to changes in the data collection processes. Modifications in the data collection procedures influence the outcomes of the system. The growth of engagement and improved processing of the collection system increased the incidence of the game injuries but decreased the severity. The data in later years show a decrease in variability in incidence and severity. But only major changes across seasons influenced the comparability of the data. Good output data is needed to correctly inform organisational decisions, and this is dependent on the quality of the input data.
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