Abstract
M.Phil.
Previously, not much attention was given to vision and visual skills in the everyday sport setting. The attention that it did get was not from optometry and ophthalmology, these two were late comers on this subject, but more and more athletes and coaches are realizing the importance of vision in their sport performance, although vision training were done inadvertently in the past. Sport performance involves motor and vision aspects. If the motor section does not work efficiently, the vision section will be hampered; in return, if the vision section does not work efficiently, the motor section will also be hampered. For this reason, vision was investigated.
In this study an investigation was done on 17-year old (n = 35) and 15-year old (n = 28) rugby players. The aim of this study was to determine whether the visual skills of the 17-year-old boys would be better than that of the 15-year-old boys. Both groups were subjected to a battery of eleven rugby related visual tests. The results obtained, show that in some of the software skills such as eye-hand coordination, eye-body coordination and visual reaction time the 17-year-old group performed statistically better (p<0.05) than the 15-year-old group. The latter group only performed statistically better (p<0.05) in skills classified as hardware skills such as static visual acuity, contrast sensitivity and stereopsis.
The results showed a general lack of visual skills. Sport specific visual training programmes will be needed to motor performance training if these athletes are going to develop in elite performers.
Professor Jannie Ferreira