A strength of the study is that the compliance was recorded
both among teams and individual players, providing a detailed
account of the acceptance of the intervention. In addition, the
sample size of both players and coaches was large and the follow-
up period was one complete football season. With respect
to the coach interviews, the main objective was to identify
the attitudes and beliefs towards injury prevention training
among the coaches, but we also wanted to evaluate the
warm-up programme and its exercises. As a consequence, the
interviews were conducted after the season. However, the perceived
risk of injury can easily infl uence the attitudes towards
injury prevention training;36 39 thus, it would have been more
appropriate to assess attitudes before the season and to evaluate
the content of the programme after the season.
Regarding the relationship between coach attitudes, compliance
and team injury risk, only coaches who completed
the recording of compliance and injuries were included in the
analyses. Although the most common barrier to study participation
reported by coaches was the additional work of data
recording and reporting, some teams may have dropped out
due to low motivation towards the intervention programme.
Therefore, coach attitudes to the programme may be less
favourable than those reported by the study participants.
Except for a 3 h instructional course with the coaches
and team captains in the preseason, the teams received no