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

Abstract

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 s..