Players at Bristol City Women are set to take part in a landmark menstrual cycle study in a bid to understand why female footballers are susceptible to Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL) injuries.

The knee injury has debilitated numerous players in the Women’s Super League this season including three alone at Bristol, who are currently bottom of the table. Meag Sargeant and Elise Hughes both suffered ACL tears in the same match last month while playing for the Robins, while forward Abi Harrison picked up the injury last November.

The study, which will be rolled out at the end of this month, will determine how joint laxity and lower limb stiffness are influenced by different stages of the menstrual cycle. If successful, Telegraph Sport understands it could play a pioneering role in critically managing injury prevention among elite female footballers.

On Friday, Telegraph Sport reported how Chelsea Women have tailored training programmes around players’ menstrual cycles in an attempt to enhance performance and reduce injuries by tracking monthly bleeds through the FitrWoman app.

Bristol City told Telegraph Sport they have been collecting menstrual function data on a self-reporting basis for a number of years through daily wellness questionnaires, with players simply stating if they are menstruating on any given day. Since the start of this season, the club has expanded this to recording players’ symptom severity throughout their monthly cycles.

“When some players start their menstrual cycles, they tell me the pain is almost unbearable,” said Chris Difford, the club’s lead physical performance coach. “Some are visibly not able to do what we want them to. They’d say: ‘I’m really suffering from stomach pains because I’m on my period.’ That was the lightbulb moment. We needed to know this before training because if they’re on a heavy loading day, they obviously can’t train the same.”