WHAT have Sol Campbell, Oleg Luzhny, Ugo Ehiogu, Graeme Le Saux , Roy Keane and Emile Heskey got in common? Answer: They have all got hamstring injuries.

There has been a sudden rush of hamstrings twanging and nobody can put their finger on why.

The answer is simple. Hamstring injuries are back in fashion.

There is always one injury en vogue at any one time in soccer and hamstrings are the new fad.

They were last in fashion 10 years ago but then they became passe when cruciate ligament injuries came from nowhere to strike down anybody who was anybody. They lasted three or four years before the aducta muscle injury shot from oblivion to stardom and then back into oblivion again before anyone had chance to find out where it was. Maybe the players couldn't spell it.

Now it is back to being the hamstring's turn and like all soccer fashions it is causing big ructions in the outside world.

There is even a conference on 'The Hamstring' organised by the UK Association of Doctors in Sport tomorrow.

They shouldn't bother. It's just a fad and will soon be replaced by another, probably previously unheard of injury which will suddenly and unexplainedly sentence dozens of players to the treatment table. My money is on the second metatarsel.