Washington, July 7 : Women footballers are less likely to fake on-field injuries in comparison with their male counterparts, a new study has revealed.

The study has been carried out researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center.

“The goals of our study were to determine the frequency of apparent injury incidents in women’s international soccer and estimate what proportion of these incidents is authentic. It is clear from this study that female players don’t fake injuries at the same rate as their male counterparts,” Daryl Rosenbaum, M. D., an assistant professor of Family and Community Medicine at Wake Forest Baptist was quoted as saying.

Rosenbaum said that in 2008, FIFA had issued a directive calling for ‘the football family to unite in denouncing injury simulation and working to eradicate this scourge from the game.’

For the latest study, video recordings of 47 televised games from two international women’s tournaments were reviewed to identify incidents in which a player behaved as if injured.

Rosenbaum’s research indicates that apparent injury incidents for women are much less frequent than for men, however, occurring at a rate of 5.74 per match as compared to 11.26 per men’s match.

The study reveals that ‘questionable’ injuries are more likely to be associated with contact and referee sanctions than “definite” injuries, which may indicate that players may use these situations to try to deceive referees. There was no evidence that teams that did this frequently won more often, nor was there any evidence that players used injury simulation as a way to try and rest or kill time.

“In the end, I think this study shows that women are less likely than men to fake soccer injuries. What isn’t clear is if injury simulation is used to gain a tactical advantage. Only the players themselves know the answer to that question,” Rosenbaum said. (ANI)