81 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
R. Volpe (ed.), Casebook of Traumatic Injury Prevention,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27419-1_6
SafeClub: An Efective Soccer
Injury Prevention Program
Daisy Radha Singla
SafeClub is an injury prevention program
designed for the soccer community to promote
risk management techniques in soccer practices
and games, which utilizes multifaceted strategies
that incorporates soccer club administrators.
6.1 Background
6.1.1 History and Development
YouthSafe (ca. 1982, formerly SpineSafe) began
as an injury prevention program solely devoted to
preventing spinal cord injury. SpineSafe dissemi-
nated injury prevention information by employ-
ing an individual who was experiencing a spine
injury to conduct information sessions about how
to prevent spinal cord injury. These informational
sessions were presented to youth in school set-
tings. The implementation of SpineSafe contin-
ued until 1999 when the organization examined
injury prevention evidence. As a result, YouthSafe,
what was once considered a branch of SpineSafe,
became SafeClub. Furthermore, while spinal
cord injury remains a focus of both YouthSafe
and SafeClub, both YouthSafe and SafeClub
decided to focus on primary prevention of all
injuries (K. Abbott, personal communication,
January 23, 2008).
The program SafeClub was devised in 2001
by Alex Donaldson, former Health Promotion
Offcer at Northern Sydney Health Promotion
Service. The foundation of the program began
with research into sports safety techniques among
150 community clubs across four codes (i.e.,
sports): rugby league, rugby union, netball, and
soccer. This research concluded that few commu-
nity sports clubs implemented organized risk
management techniques, and soccer community
clubs were the most likely to implement the least
number of sports safety-related activities (Abbott
& Donaldson, 2004). A joint venture between
YouthSafe and Northern Sidney Central Coast
Health (NSCCH), SafeClub was subsequently
founded as a private organization in 2002.
Consultations with local community sports
clubs were undertaken by YouthSafe. These con-
sultations involved communicating with sports
administrators, players, and coaches to request
information including current sports safety activ-
ities and resources, those lacking in demand and
those activities required to support community
sports clubs (K. Abbott, personal communica-
tion, January 23, 2008). According to Abbott,
feedback determined that “it was obvious that
giving information on a specifc topic wasn’t
going to be relevant to a vast majority of these
clubs.” Thus, SafeClub was devised specifcally
to provide a systematic execution in managing
D. R. Singla (*)
Sinai Health System, University of Toronto,
Toronto, ON, Canada
e-mail: daisy.singla@utoronto.ca
6