FootyFirst comes to Southern Football League
Football clubs in the Southern Football League were offered a fantastic opportunity in late October 2012 when the FootyFirst exercise training program to prevent leg injuries in community football was launched in the region.
The 12 clubs that were represented at the launch heard Sara Hasani (a physiotherapist from St Kilda Football Club), Cam McGregor (Senior Coach, Anglesea Football Club who successfully implemented FootyFirst in 2012) and Alex Donaldson (the FootyFirst project manager from Monash University) talk about the injury prevention and football performance benefits of FootyFirst.
FootyFirst is based on the best available scientific evidence and is specifically targeted at preventing hamstring, knee, ankle and groin injuries among community football players. It is a comprehensive pre-training warm up program consisting of a series of dynamic stretches, strength and conditioning exercises and jumping, landing and changing direction activities. It has been designed for players to complete in about 20 minutes, before training, twice a week. FootyFirst was developed by a team of Australia’s leading sports injury prevention researchers, critiqued and endorsed by the AFL sports scientists, sports physicians and physiotherapists and reviewed by a range of community football representatives.
During the 2013 pre-season, the Southern Football League, the SFL Coaches Association and the Monash University research team have been encouraging and supporting clubs and coaches to implement FootyFirst with their players. The 12 clubs and coaches that have signed up to deliver FootyFirst have received free comprehensive teaching manuals, posters to use with their players and a DVD and access to FootyFirst exercise demonstrations on-line. All clubs have also had an opportunity to attend a FootyFirst ‘Coaching the Coaches’ session covering the FootyFirst warm-up and Level 1 and 2 exercises.
All participating clubs also have access to a trained and qualified FootyFirst mentor who is available to assist them to implement FootyFirst at their club.
Over the coming football season it is anticipated that participating coaches will lead their players through the 5 levels of FootyFirst exercises and begin to see the benefits for individual players and their team as a whole. The Monash research team will be collecting data on SFL coach attitudes and knowledge about preventing leg injuries in football; how many players participate in FootyFirst and the effectiveness of FootyFirst as an injury prevention program.
Anyone interested in knowing more about FootyFirst, getting their club involved in implementing FootyFirst or more details on available FREE training and resources should contact Matt Duck at the SFL (9553 5644; matt.duck@sfl.com.au) or Alex Donaldson at Monash University (0409 082 892; a.donaldson@ballarat.edu.au)
The FootyFirst video material can be accessed at http://www.aflcommunityclub.com.au/index.php?id=906.
Levels 1 to 5 posters are available below, as well as the coaching manual.