Do community football players wear allocated protective equipment? Descriptive Results from a randomised conrrolled trial

Before protective equipment can be adopted as an effective sports safety intervention, itsprotective 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 InjuryPrevention Project (AFIPP) was a large scale community-based randomised controlled trial toassess the effectiveness of headgear and mouthguards in preventing head/neck/dentalinjuries in Australian Football. A subcomponent of this study was to assess the extent towhich community football players complied with the requirement to wear protective headgearand/or mouthguards, as this equipment is not compulsory in this sport. Three hundred andone community football players from 23 teams were randomly allocated to one of threeprotective equipment intervention arms or one control arm. Protective equipment usage wasmeasured by a primary data collector at each training and game session during the 2001playing season. Mouthgnard use was higher than headgear use, with the highest usage forboth being measured during games rather than training. Although many players usemouthguards, particularly in games, most do not wear headgear. Given the low adoption ofheadgear, other strategies to prevent head injuries need further investigation.