What happens to your income if you get injured?

Every professional sportsperson understands, at some level, that injury is part of the job. What's less often discussed is exactly what happens financially if an injury turns out to be serious — or career-ending. Your ability to earn is tied directly to your physical fitness in a way that's genuinely unusual across most professions, and that risk deserves proper financial planning, not just hope.

Club medical cover and standard contract terms vary significantly, and it's worth understanding precisely what you're covered for, and for how long, before you assume you're protected. Many players discover the gaps in their cover only after an injury has already happened — at exactly the point when it's too late to do anything about it.

The PFA also provides a baseline level of injury protection to registered players, which is a genuinely useful safety net — but it's worth knowing it exists as a foundation, not a complete solution. The benefit levels involved tend to be modest relative to what many players actually earn, particularly higher up the game, which is exactly why it's treated as one layer of protection rather than the whole answer.

One detail worth understanding properly before you assume you're covered: how a policy actually defines "unable to work." Some policies only pay out if you can't work in any occupation at all — a very high bar that a career-ending football injury often doesn't clear, since plenty of players remain capable of other kinds of work even when their playing career is over. A policy written specifically around your sport, by contrast, recognises that no longer being able to compete professionally is itself the loss being insured — which is a meaningfully different, and usually more useful, form of cover.

This is where dedicated income protection and critical illness cover come in. These are policies designed specifically to replace a portion of your income if you're unable to work due to injury or serious illness — and, importantly, policies built for professional athletes account for the specific, elevated risk of the job, rather than treating you like an office worker with a generic desk-based risk profile.

The details matter. How is "unable to play" actually defined in the policy? Does cover extend to loss of career, not just short-term injury? What's actually protected — a percentage of your current salary, or a fixed sum? These are the kinds of questions worth asking before you sign anything, and they're exactly the kind of detail a generic insurer often won't have thought through for a sporting career.

The best time to arrange this kind of cover is while you're fit, playing, and have no reason to think about it — because by definition, once you're injured, it's too late to buy protection against the thing that's already happened. Treat it the same way you'd treat any other part of your financial planning: something to sort out early, not something to revisit only when things go wrong.