FMPA

Dr Tom Chambers discussing the role of sleep in football medicine and performance.

Dr Chambers is an anaesthetic doctor based in London and a European Sleep Research Society-certified Somnologist. He also holds a master’s degree in Sleep Medicine. Dr Chambers is the Chief Medical Officer of the tech-enabled clinical sleep service Theta Sleep, which he co-founded, and is passionate about the interplay between sleep and wellbeing.

Dr Botchey is a consultant in sport, exercise and musculoskeletal medicine. He is passionate about individualised patient care and the role of orthobiologics in managing musculoskeletal conditions. To this end, he founded The Sports Biologics Clinic based in London and Berkshire. Dr Botchey has extensive experience in elite football across England pathway teams, as well as with Chelsea and Arsenal, while he has also worked in American Football, rugby, golf, hockey and athletics

Dr Forsythe is Deputy Head of Sports Medicine and leads the Head Injury & Concussion Care at Meliora Medical. Additionally, he contributes to the UK Concussion Working Group. Dr Forsythe’s background is as a general practitioner with a special interest in adolescent health and sports medicine, having garnered extensive experience in elite sport.

The question of how and when to return a player after a hamstring injury is one that affects every medical and performance department in professional football. Today’s conversation aims to give listeners a framework grounded in the best available evidence, drawn directly from Paolo’s growing body of PhD research.

Paolo is a physiotherapist currently as the Lead Rehabilitation Physiotherapist at Strasbourg in Ligue unh. Alongside his clinical work, he is completing a PhD at Middlesex University, where his research focuses on return-to-play decision-making following hamstring injuries in professional football. He has previously work at Chelsea, Brentford and Norwich.

Paolo has rapidly established himself as a leading voice in this area, with publications in several reputable journals, as well as a widely read blog for the British Journal of Sports Medicine. He was recently co-author on a survey of RTP practice across five of Europe’s top leagues, published just a few weeks ago.

Dr Amarnani is a consultant in sport, exercise and musculoskeletal medicine and honorary rheumatology fellow. He is the president of the Royal Society of Medicine’s Rheumatology and Rehabilitation council, as well as serving as a medical advisor and trustee to the UK’s National Axial Spondyloarthritis Society. Dr Amarnani’s elite sporting experience extends from football (West Ham United) to cricket, tennis, ballet and beyond. He is also a widely published researcher interested in the interaction between exercise and rheumatological disease

Dr Pereira specialises in Performance, Recovery, Concentration and Imagery in Football through yoga and has taught yoga since 1981. He completed his PhD in Physical Education and Sport – Physical Activity and Health with a thesis on yoga in football, and his master’s degree in High-Performance Sports Training with a dissertation on yoga in swimming at the Lusófona University in Lisbon. He is the director and coordinator of the Introduction to Yoga Short Course at the Lusófona University. Dr Pereira’s article ‘Integrating Yoga into Contemporary Football Training’ appears in the FMPA publication ‘football medicine & performance’ 50th Edition.

Nick is a Physiotherapist with over twenty years of experience working in elite sport. Throughout his career he has worked across professional football environments including West Bromwich Albion, Bolton Wanderers, Manchester City Academy, Fulham, Wigan Athletic and the England Under‑21 National team, as well as internationally with Al Jazira in the UAE.

Alongside his clinical work in elite sport, Nick teaches on musculoskeletal and sports medicine programmes and has extensive experience in injection therapy. He also works in medico‑legal practice within sport and is an advisor to the Football Medicine & Performance Association.

Nick recently authored an article in the FMPA magazine discussing the evolving role of hyaluronic acid injections in joint health, particularly in footballers experiencing degenerative joint changes.

More at: https://www.fmpa.co.uk/podcasts/nick_worth_podcast/

Dr Shafik is a sport and musculoskeletal medicine physician currently serving as a Club Doctor to Chelsea FC and as Clinical Lead for the NHS Musculoskeletal Interface Clinical Assessment Service in South London. He has previously worked at Crystal Palace and Millwall in elite sport, alongside his NHS roles in musculoskeletal medicine, general practice and emergency medicine. Of course, he is the FMPA’s Senior Editor!

Dr Martin McIntyre is the founder and clinical lead at the Sports Injuries & Sports Medicine (SISM) Clinic in Castlebar Co Mayo, a centre that has become a hub for both elite athlete care and applied sports medicine research in Ireland. With a background in sports medicine and performance science, Martin has spent years working across high-performance environments in Gaelic games, rugby, and professional team sport, developing a particular focus on hamstring injury, recurrence, and return-to-play decision-making.

Out of that work came the development of the Hamstring Risk and Injury Gauge, or HRIG – a hamstring-specific assessment and rehabilitation system designed to measure and train hamstring function in positions that closely reflect sprinting and real injury mechanisms. HRIG is now being used across elite football, rugby, athletics, and high-performance settings worldwide, supporting injury risk screening, readiness-to-train monitoring, and evidence-informed return-to-play.

Topics covered:

– Research underpinning HRIG

– How isometric hamstring testing is changing the way we think about injury risk, rehabilitation, and performance.

– How HRIG fits into the world of elite sport

Dr Nicky Keay is an exercise endocrinologist, author, researcher and dancer. Dr Keay is passionate about taking a personalised approach to hormone health with a view to optimising performance and recovery. She has a particular interest in relative energy deficiency in sport, or REDs, and is an Honorary Clinical Lecturer at University College London, as well as advisor to Scottish Ballet.