Are we sports physiotherapists working as a team as well as we could?

Sports medicine is seen as one of the fields that we, as health practitioners, work together as a team for the betterment of the athlete. I believe that we do this well. Health practitioners also need to be able to work well with another team to truly get the best for the athlete—the management team. The personnel in this relationship can appear to have different goals with the management/coaching staff wanting fit players ‘now’, and the medical staff wanting to protect the short-term and long-term health of the athlete. Add to the mix the athlete who wants to get out there and play but sometimes needs to be protected from himself or herself. It is amazing that this can, and does, work well at times. However, for all those who have followed the social media over the last year there are many recent episodes when it has gone wrong. So, what has gone wrong? When you have top players, good-quality managers and some excellent sports medicine providers, how does the system fail?