Do community football players wear allocated protective equipment? Descriptive results from a randomised controlled trial.

Before protective equipment can be adopted as an effective sports safety intervention, its protective effects in reducing the incidence and severity of injury need to be demonstrated, Importantly, it also needs to be well accepted by the players. The Australian Football Injury Prevention Project (AFIPP) was a large scale community-based randomised controlled trial to assess the effectiveness of headgear and mouthguards in preventing head/neck/dental injuries in Australian Football. A subcomponent of this study was to assess the extent to which community football players complied with the requirement to wear protective headgear and/or mouthguards, as this equipment is not compulsory in this sport. Three hundred and one community football players from 23 teams were randomly allocated to one of three protective equipment intervention arms or one control arm. Protective equipment usage was measured by a primary data collector at each training and game session during the 2001 playing season. Mouthguard use was higher than headgear use, with the highest usage for both being measured during games rather than training. Although many players use mouthguards, particularly in games, most do not wear headgear. Given the low adoption of headgear, other strategies to prevent head injuries need further investigation.

Community football players' attitudes towards protective equipment--a pre-season measure.

BACKGROUND: The Australian football injury prevention project (AFIPP) was a randomised controlled trial examining the effects of protective equipment on injury rates in Australian Football. OBJECTIVE: To present the results of the AFIPP baseline survey of community football players' attitudes towards protective equipment. METHODS: Teams of players were recruited from the largest community football league in Victoria, Australia, during the 2001 playing season; 301 players were enrolled in the study and all were surveyed before the season began about their attitudes towards protective headgear and mouthguards. RESULTS: Almost three quarters of the players (73.6%) reported wearing mouthguards during the previous playing season (year 2000) compared with only 2.1% wearing headgear. The most common reasons for not wearing headgear and mouthguards (in non-users) were: "I don't like wearing it" (headgear: 44.8%; mouthguards: 30.6%), and "It is too uncomfortable" (headgear: 40.7%; mouthguards: 45.8%). CONCLUSIONS: The higher mouthguard usage reflects the favourable attitudes towards mouthguards by Australian football players generally. Similarly, the low headgear usage reflects the low acceptance of this form of protection in this sport. Further research should be directed towards establishing the reasons why players seem to believe that headgear plays a role in injury prevention yet few wear it.

The reliability of team-based primary data collectors for the collection of exposure and protective equipment use data in community sport.

OBJECTIVE: Reliable data allows for the generalisation of study findings to the wider population. The aim of this study was to assess the reliability of using community team based primary data collectors for the collection of exposure and protective equipment use data. METHODS: Nine clubs (23 teams) from a metropolitan Australian Football league in Victoria each provided one primary data collector to monitor exposure and protective equipment use over a regular playing season. Four random audits of this data collection for each team were conducted throughout the regular playing season. The audits were compared with data collected by the club data collectors and the level of agreement assessed. RESULTS: Although exposure data agreement was higher during competition and protective equipment use agreement higher during training, there was no significant difference in data collected by the primary data collectors and the random audits. CONCLUSIONS: The use of trained data collectors associated with Australian Football teams provides reliable information about player exposure and protective equipment use in community intervention studies.