Budget spending on community sport a winner

Sports Medicine Australia applauds the 2010 Budget’s spending on community sport over the next four years.

Under the Budget 45,000 community coaches and officials will be able to access additional education and training, some at a subsidised rate.

Sports Medicine Australia Chief Executive Officer, Nello Marino says we hope this will provide community sport with the opportunity it needs to improve its capacity in a number of important areas including injury prevention and management.

“Training is traditionally the responsibility of sporting clubs who all too often are made up of volunteers. The government-commissioned Crawford report published in November highlighted the fact that volunteers already face increasing costs for required courses such as coaching, police checks or other out of pocket expenses such as telephone calls, travel costs and sporting equipment,” said Mr Marino.

“There is no wonder additional training and accreditation associated with qualifications such as first aid is often not pursued by cash strapped clubs.

“We hope that the allocation of funds provided within the Budget will give support to sports first aiders, sports trainers and other sport personnel in order to support initiatives such as sports safety and injury prevention at the community level.

“This will no doubt make the opportunity for training more of a priority and have a positive impact on grassroots sport, not only in reducing sports injury rates but also increasing participation and enhancing performance across all sporting communities.

“Sports Medicine Australia provides training to more than 5000 sports trainers and sports first aiders annually through our Safer Sport Program. Volunteers trained through this program provide invaluable prevention, treatment and ongoing management of sporting injuries throughout community sport,” said Mr Marino.