Video-analysis of player's kinematics in running out of boundaries in association football fields

The risk of injury following a player's impact with objects in sport facilities is a growing problem, as shown by serious accidents that happen when players have head impacts with obstacles and barriers installed around the play area. At present, no experimental data are available about the kinematics of football (soccer) players during a running-out of playing areas scenario. Experimental tests on a sample of 14 skilled football players, aged between 17 and 19 years, were conducted to investigate athletic performances in common gaming actions of running, considered potentially-damaging when they occur near the boundary lines of the regular pitch. In the current research, a player's motion was captured with a high-frequency camera and kinematic data were video-analysed. The experimental trials resulted in kinematic data plots, characterised by a decelerating trend of the speed versus the distance covered by the players during the required movements. A section at the starting point and three sections at consecutive distances (a total amount of four sections in correspondence of 0 m and consecutive 1.5 m, 2.5 m, 3.5 m on the lane covered by players) of the decelerating trends of data were analysed. Findings of this pilot study should be useful for the improvements of passive safety in sports fields, allowing the correlation of the potential impact energy of players with the installation distances of protective devices.