Injuries in professional football: identification of aetiological factors

UK health and safety legislation aims to protect employees from injury at work; professional footballers as employees are therefore covered by this legislation. A risk assessment approach to health and safety issues, as required by the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1992, has been undertaken to establish the epidemiological and aetiological factors related to injuries in professional football and to identify management and training procedures to reduce the incidence and severity of injuries. Issues of injury frequency and causation during the period 1994 to 1997 were addressed through two routes. First, during the 1994 World Cup Finals, 1996 European Championships, and 1994 to 1997 English league seasons via match analysis. Second, player injuries at four professional football league clubs were recorded by the club physiotherapist. These results provided complementary evidence showing an overall injury rate of 8.5/1000 playing hours, injury rates during training and matches being 3.5/1000 and 27.7/1000 playing hours, respectively. Two thirds of the injuries occurred during competitive match play, the remainder during training, the highest incidences of match and training injuries taking place during the first month of the playing season (P