Intervention implementation support strategies
| Organisational development | |
| Management support | Research staff will be allocated time to speak to club representatives about the research study at a Football League meeting, which all clubs attend. Football Leagues will endorse the intervention to their clubs via email and encourage their club’s participation and progress through the programme. |
| Policies and procedures | Club representatives will be provided with hard-copy and electronic templates to assist clubs develop health promotion policies. For example, to increase the physical activity of existing members, templates will be supplied to support clubs develop policies regarding equal game time participation for all players. To increase physical activity in the population generally, clubs will be supplied with examples of recruitment strategies that can be used to attract new junior players to the club, as well as retain current players. |
| Recognition and reward systems | Clubs will be provided with ongoing recognition of progress (eg, on completion of an action item, at monthly contacts) to promote sustained engagement. Progress will be recognised and rewarded with a certificate of accreditation. A digital asset pack (copy and paste templates for the club’s social media pages and website) will be provided to clubs when they have achieved accreditation. Clubs will also be provided with a ‘case study template’ that they can provide to their local media outlet, which will showcase their participation in the programme. |
| Information systems | A customer relationship management (CRM) system will allow research staff to monitor the progress of each club towards achieving the intervention criteria and provide real-time feedback. Clubs will be provided with tailored action plans generated by the CRM system. |
| Systems and prompts | Electronic reminders (eg, emails) will be used to prompt the implementation of prespecified health promotion practices. |
| Informal culture | Clubs will be encouraged to select rounds of the junior competition, or a junior event, to focus on promoting the intervention informally (ie, the alcohol awareness round or the healthy juniors round). |
| Workforce development | |
| External courses | Clubs will be provided with an alcohol management toolkit to increase awareness of alcohol legislation and best-practice strategies to manage alcohol in their setting. |
| Resource allocation | |
| Human resources | Research staff will be allocated to help clubs implement the intervention. These research staff will also monitor and provide feedback on the implementation of practices. Assistance will be provided via regular phone and email contact with individual club representatives (once per month) during the winter season to maintain support. |
| Physical resources | A comprehensive kit of hard copy resources will be provided to clubs on commencement of participation. The kit will include posters promoting alcohol-free junior competitions; alcohol-free change room signs; a list of alternate prizes to alcohol for fundraisers, raffles or gifts to coaches; smoke-free posters; a canteen whiteboard to promote healthy food and beverage options prominently; a safe food handling poster; letter templates for clubs to send to parents to encourage them to provide healthy snacks for juniors; and a playing environment sign with the Good Sports Code of Conduct prominently displayed, and other similar signs, posters and letter templates. Additionally, electronic versions of resources will be provided to junior clubs throughout the winter season via email, including the policy templates, posters and signage. Links to industry experts (ie, healthy food and beverage suppliers) will be provided to clubs, and a lead sporting person for each participating football code (AFL or Rugby League) will endorse the intervention through hard-copy and digital (eg, video) resources. The Alcohol and Drug Foundation will develop all toolkits and resources for use in the intervention. |