'University of Sarajevo Faculty of Health Sciences'
Abstract
Sporting participation has numerous benefits to the individual and the community. Sports injury is an unfortunate consequence of participation and can have a negative physical, psychosocial and financial impact. Prevention of sporting injury can reduce the barriers to sporting participation. Injury prevention methodology considers injury surveillance to be one of the initial steps in the process of planning, developing and assessing the effectiveness of any prevention strategy implemented. Injury surveillance relies on a clear and unambiguous definition of injury and a reliable method of data collection to provide an accurate profile of injuries. Globally, there is published injury surveillance data available for professional soccer competitions in most regions of the world, with the notable exception of the Australian competition. Within Australia, injury surveillance results have been published for Rugby League, Rugby Union and Australian Rules Football. Our injury surveillance of the Australian professional soccer competition allows comparison to global injury data on soccer injuries and to other football codes within Australia. It also quantifies the significant risk of subsequent injury after an initial hip/groin injury and the player salary cost of injury in the Hyundai A-League. This new data advances the knowledge base of the sporting injury profile of professional soccer and informs the next stage of injury prevention program development
