Preventing lower limb injuries: Is the latest evidence being translated into the football field?

There is accumulating international evidence that lower limb injuries in sport can be prevented through targeted training but the extentto which this knowledge has been translated to real-world sporting practice is not known. A semi-structured questionnaire of all coachesfrom the nine Sydney Australian Football League Premier Division teams was conducted. Information was sought about their knowledge andbehaviours in relation to delivering training programs, including their uptake of the latest scientific evidence for injury prevention. Directobservation of a sample of the coach-delivered training sessions was also undertaken to validate the questionnaire. Coaches ranked trainingsession elements directly related to the game as being of most importance. They strongly favoured warming-up and cooling-down as injuryprevention measures but changing direction and side-stepping training was considered to be of little/no importance for safety. Only one-thirdbelieved that balance training had some importance for injury prevention, despite accumulating scientific evidence to the contrary. Drills, setplay, ball handling and kicking skills were all considered to be of least importance to injury prevention. These views were consistent withthe content of the observed coach-led training sessions. In conclusion, current football training sessions do not give adequate attention to thedevelopment of skills most likely to reduce the risk of lower limb injury in players. There is a need to improve the translation of the latestscientific evidence about effective injury prevention into coaching practices.© 2008 Sports Medicine Australia. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.