Efficacy of injury prevention related coach education within netball and soccer

Abstract

In 2004, Netball New Zealand and New Zealand Football adapted a generic 10-point action plan for sports injury prevention, SportSmart, to create NetballSmart and SoccerSmart, as part of their coach education programmes. A small-size descriptive study was conducted in both sports, to assess the efficacy of integrating sports injury prevention into coach education. NetballSmart was evaluated at the end of 2005, via a telephone survey of 217 coaches (53% response rate) who had attended a NetballSmart course earlier in the year. SoccerSmart was evaluated at the start of 2007, via an Internet questionnaire completed by 71 coaches (20% response rate) who had attended a SoccerSmart course in 2006. The evaluations focused on the quality and use of the course resource material, as well as assessing the extent to which coaches had incorporated injury prevention behaviours into player practices. After attending a NetballSmart course, 89% of coaches changed the way they coached, with 95% reported using knowledge from the course and passing it on to players. Ninety-six percent of football/soccer coaches also changed the way they coached, with most change relating to warm-up/cool-down and stretch (65%), technique (63%), fitness (60%) and nutrition/hydration (58%) practices. Although this was a descriptive study in nature, with a small sample size, we conclude that integration of injury prevention content within coach education courses and resources may be a viable and effective strategy to help community coaches – and therefore community players – help reduce their risk of injury.

Introduction

As the field of sports injury prevention develops, particularly at the community/amateur level, effective delivery mechanisms are required. The use of coach education to deliver injury prevention messages has received little attention in the literature. Indeed, the effectiveness of coach education in general has not been fully determined. Although coaches repeatedly cite coaching experience as the primary source of their coaching knowledge, researchers have yet to examine the process of how this experience is transferred into knowledge.¹ One paper considered general themes of coaching research during the period 1970–2001² and subsequent research by the same authors covered the period 2001–2005.³ For both periods, only 2% of articles related to the assessment of coach education.

In New Zealand (NZ), the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC), a government agency, invests in coach education, as a strategy to reduce injuries in sport and recreation. Almost all sport and recreation claims to ACC are derived from participation in community based amateur sport, therefore this is the focus of ACC's sport injury prevention programmes.

Following the successful development of the 10-point action plan for sports injury prevention (SportSmart) and later a rugby-specific version called RugbySmart, ACC, in association with Netball New Zealand (NNZ) and New Zealand Football (NZF), created NetballSmart (www.netballsmart.co.nz) and SoccerSmart (www.soccersmart.co.nz), respectively. New Zealand Football was known as New Zealand Soccer at the time SoccerSmart was being developed. As the SoccerSmart brand had been created and implemented 18 months before, it was decided to keep this name. In all cases, the injury prevention points covered are: (1) screening; (2) warm-up, cool-down and stretch; (3) physical conditioning; (4) technique; (5) fair play; (6) protective equipment; (7) hydration and nutrition; (8) injury reporting; (9) environment; and (10) injury management (see www.acc.co.nz/sportsmart for more details). The sport-specific action plans sit alongside sport-specific coach education courses and resources. The impact of sport injury prevention programmes in general on ACC claims and costs has been reported elsewhere.⁴ In this study, the aim was to determine if coaches found the information provided by coach education of sufficient use and relevance to subsequently incorporate it into their coaching.