Dr. Nicholas Shannon — Sports & Exercise Medicine Chiropractor, Shannon Clinic Melbourne CBD
There is a version of sports chiropractic that exists almost entirely on paper, postgraduate qualifications, textbook techniques, and a patient base of recreational athletes with manageable injuries and clean x-rays. And then there is the version that involves being the first line of clinical support for a rugby player with a suspected cervical cord injury on a rugby pitch in Hong Kong, with no follow-up pathway and no way of knowing what happens to him next.
This is a reflection on what 20 years as a sports chiropractor in Melbourne has actually looked like from opening the doors on Collins Street in 2007, to pitchside coverage at international events, to the press coverage that followed, to what I think matters most in sports medicine that rarely makes headlines.
2007 — Opening on Collins Street
Shannon Clinic opened at 12 Collins Street in 2007 before eventually finding its home at 220 Collins Street. I always had an interest in health, fitness and sports, however it was 3 years later playing social touch rugby where I tore my ACL that began my journey in sports medicine. As it was there, having been assessed by a leading orthopaedic surgeon that I decided, I want to acquire the same level of knowledge and proficiency they had.
The decision to locate in Melbourne’s CBD was deliberate. The city has a dense, year-round sporting culture of runners, cyclists, tennis players, AFL supporters who also play on weekends, with close proximity to world leading sporting facilities, alongside an enormous professional population that sits at a desk for eight hours and then tries to train before or after work. Both groups need access to genuine sports and exercise medicine expertise. And at the time, finding a sports chiropractor in Melbourne CBD who held postgraduate sports medicine qualifications, rather than simply a chiropractic degree and a sports interest, was to my knowledge at the time impossible, they didn’t exist. That gap was part of the reason the clinic existed.
The core philosophy from day one was the same as it is now: treat every patient as if they are an athlete with the same clinical rigour, the same commitment to accurate diagnosis, and the same focus on rehabilitation rather than indefinite passive treatment regardless of their level of competition or sporting involvement.
From Melbourne to the World Stage
Following my knee injury I took myself off to the USA to begin my postgraduate sports and exercise medicine journey , starting with the American College of Sports Medicine Team Physician Course. This led to two enrichment programs, one in the sports medicine department at the University of Minnesota and other in the sports orthopaedic surgery department at the University of Pennsylvania. This ultimately steered me to the University of Otago, to undertake their 2 year Postgraduate Diploma in Sports and Exercise Medicine.
Along the journey, I undertook the pitch side trauma care course through the Rugby Football Union and the Hong Kong College of Emergency Medicine. As well as a sports diagnostic ultrasound course through the American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. With the pitch side trauma care course a requirement to join the medical team at the IRB Hong Kong Rugby 7s.
The Australian Open
Over 9 years and still going, I have worked as a chiropractor providing treatment to players at the Australian Open, the first Grand Slam of the tennis calendar and one of the most physically demanding events on the calendar. It was an opportunity by chance, after a player and their coach sought out treatment prior to the Grand Slam for a knee injury. From there it expanded to other players and their teams and here we are 9 years later. This experience played a role in the my decision to lead the research we published on injuries in elite tennis players in the American College of Sports Medicine’s Current Sports Medicine Reports, and the clinical approach we take with every tennis injury we assess and manage in Melbourne.
Furthermore, as I and a close professional coach colleague of mine saw the same injuries and training mistakes, lead us to writing our ebook on injury prevention in tennis. As we wanted to help educate players, parents and coaches with evidence-based clinical and professional coaching knowledge and experience to help keep players on court and enjoying their tennis.
The Macau Grand Prix and Bathurst
Motorsport is a sport that receives very little attention in the sports medicine literature relative to its genuine physical demands. The concentration required to drive a car at racing limits in close proximity to competitors, while simultaneously managing race strategy, communicating with the pit, and monitoring the car’s performance; sits alongside elite levels of neck and upper body strength requirements, heat stress, and the psychological burden of risk that is unique to motorsport.
The Macau GP, Bathurst 1000 and Bathurst 12 hour events, are unique experiences but are a reflection of elite sports medicine. There is the preparation and practice where things are reasonably calm and orderly and then there is the race. The race involves periods of calmness mixed with organized chaos, particularly when managing multiple drivers and pilots at once who are usually running different strategies and stints.
The IRB Hong Kong Rugby 7s and Kowloon Rugby Fest
In 2016, following the Macau GP and completion of further training in the US and Hong Kong, I worked with the medical team at the IRB Hong Kong Rugby 7s. What most people understand the Hong Kong 7s to be is the main professional tournament for four days of elite sevens rugby played at the Hong Kong Stadium, one of the most iconic rugby events on the calendar.
What fewer people understand is what happens in the week before the main tournament: the Hong Kong Rugby Fest. The Rugby Fest is a supporting event that runs simultaneously with the lead-up to the main tournament and includes a domestic competition and an international schoolboys competition with teams from schools across Asia.
The Kowloon Rugby Fest
The professional rugby tournament is staffed with experienced sports medicine professionals. Players are known, their medical histories are accessible, their rehabilitation resources are comprehensive, and the pathway from injury to follow-up care is often clear for most countries. That clinical infrastructure does not exist in the same way for a 16-year-old schoolboy from Malaysia playing on a Saturday morning.
As Hong Kong Stadium was one of the few grass pitches in Hong Kong, The Rugby Fest week was played on rubber pitches. This resulted in high rates of lacerations to the knees, elbows and hands which filled the bulk of our day. However, I personally assessed and managed a few more serious injuries that week including:
- An ACL rupture in a female athlete
- A suspected fractured wrist in a schoolboy competitor
- A concussion with a suspected associated central cord neuropraxia — a finding that, in any other clinical setting, would have triggered an immediate and well-resourced pathway to specialist care
- A range of lacerations, ligament sprains, and soft tissue injuries across both competitions
Challenges of follow-up care
Having the knowledge and experience to make an acute diagnosis under pressure pitchside is one aspect of sports medicine that is different to clinical practice. Another challenge is making sure the athletes are well looked after and followed up appropriately, which in this scenario was not the role of the attending clinicians. At an event like the Rugby Fest, in many cases there is no established pathway to follow up with the athletes to confirm they are receiving appropriate ongoing care. You assess. You advise. And then the athlete goes back to their school, their country, their team and you have no way of knowing whether that advice translated into the right treatment.
That gap between acute assessment and the follow-through is something that stayed with me long after leaving Hong Kong. Particularly in the case of the school boy who was from Thailand and was not in a financial position to afford an x-ray in Hong Kong to confirm the suspected fracture.
In the Press — The Age and Sydney Morning Herald
Later in 2016, Fairfax journalist Joshua Jennings approached me to discuss the Hong Kong 7s experience and my broader career in sports chiropractic and sports medicine for The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald.
The interview covered the professional experience, what it is like to be part of the medical support team at an international event, the clinical demands of pitch side coverage, and how that experience sat alongside my work in Melbourne. It was a generous piece of journalism that I was genuinely grateful for.
“Dr. Shannon shed light on what it is like to be part of the medical support team at an international event like the IRB Hong Kong Rugby 7s — working pitch side across both the professional tournament and the supporting Rugby Fest events throughout the week.”
— Joshua Jennings, The Age / Sydney Morning Herald, 2016
You can read the full article as published in The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald.
Media attention is great, but real attention is needed at the grass roots.
What the article did not cover and what I want to address here is the reflection that followed it.
The profile of events like the Hong Kong 7s is considerable. They attract media, they carry prestige, and they are genuinely excellent sporting occasions. But that profile can inadvertently obscure where pitch side sports medicine is most critically needed. It is not at professional tournaments. It is at amateur and school level sport where the injury burden is real, the medical resources are often minimal, and the pathways to appropriate follow-up care are unclear at best and nonexistent at worst.
I am proud of the work done at the Hong Kong 7s. I am proud of the work done during the Rugby Fest. And the most important clinical lesson from that entire week was not a technical one it was a systems one. Accurate diagnosis without a reliable follow-up pathway is incomplete care.
From International Events to the Research Page
The clinical experiences accumulated across these events have found their way into the published research and clinical education work that has run alongside the practice since the mid-2010s.
The paper on sports-related concussion and the role of the cervical spine co-authored with internationally recognised SRC expert Dr. Jon Patricios draws on the kind of clinical experience that comes from actually managing concussion in real sporting environments, not just reading about it. The paper on upper limb injuries in elite tennis players published in the American College of Sports Medicine’s Current Sports Medicine Reports reflects nine years of working at the Australian Open and seeing what actually goes wrong in the bodies of professional players at the highest level of the game.
In 2025, WTA Tour coach Carlos Martinez and I published “Injury Prevention in Tennis: A Comprehensive Guide”, a book that attempts to do for amateur and junior tennis players what the research literature does for elite players: give coaches, parents, and players the evidence-based information they need to make smarter decisions about training load, recovery, technique, and injury management. It is available on Amazon.
What 20 Years Has Actually Taught Me
Elite sporting events are formative, fun and offer a unique and vastly different experience to day-to-day clinical practice. It is important to be flexible and adaptable, routinely you need to think outside the box to solve problems you may not have in the comfort of a clinical practice. Additionally, you are part of a team which often means being a team player and that your job is often far greater than providing care to athletes and requires you to help the team in other ways when not working with the players.
But the patients who have shaped my clinical practice most are not the ones I have treated at international events. They are the ones who walked into 220 Collins Street with a shoulder that had not been right since a fall eight months ago, or a knee that had seen three different practitioners without a clear diagnosis, or a runner who had been told to stop running without being told why or for how long.
The job, whether you are pitch side at the Hong Kong Stadium or in a consulting room on Collins Street is the same: find out what is actually wrong, explain it clearly, and build a pathway to fix it that holds together beyond the appointment.
If you are looking for a sports chiropractor in Melbourne who takes that seriously, whether you are a competing athlete, a desk worker who trains before work, or anything in between; Shannon Clinic is at Suite 9.16, Level 9, 220 Collins Street. We have been there since 2007.
