ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Community football players’ attitudes towards protective equipment—a pre-season measure

R A Braham¹, C F Finch², A McIntosh³ and P McCrory⁴

¹ Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, Australia
² NSW Injury Risk Management Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
³ School of Safety Science, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
⁴ British Journal of Sports Medicine, Melbourne, Australia

Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Professor Caroline F Finch
NSW Injury Risk Management Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia; c.finch{at}unsw.edu.au

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.

Abbreviations: AFIPP, Australian football injury prevention project; PPE, personal protective equipment

Keywords: community Australian football; protective equipment

CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    What's this?

This article has been cited by other articles:

• Finch, C, Lloyd, D, Elliott, B (2009). The Preventing Australian Football Injuries with Exercise (PAFIX) Study: a group randomised controlled trial. Inj. Prev. 15: e1-e1 [Abstract] [Full Text]  
• Nichols, A W (2008). Sports medicine clinical trial research publications in academic medical journals between 1996 and 2005: an audit of the PubMed MEDLINE database. Br. J. Sports. Med. 42: 909-912 [Abstract] [Full Text]  
• Finch, C, Braham, R, McIntosh, A, McCrory, P, Wolfe, R (2005). Should football players wear custom fitted mouthguards? Results from a group randomised controlled trial. Inj. Prev. 11: 242-246 [Abstract] [Full Text]