The aims of this study were to develop and test Football Incident Analysis (FIA), a new video-based method for match analysis that combines football- specific and medical information, to achieve a better understanding of the injury mechanisms and events leading up to high-risk situations. Furthermore, we applied FIA to describe the characteristics of injuries and high-risk situations in the Norwegian professional football league. We also sought to assess how the violations of the Laws of the Game contribute to injury and to investigate whether the decisions made by the referees in high risk situations correctly interpret the rules of football. Finally, we wanted to describe the specific injury mechanisms for ankle and head injuries in elite male football. 1.The interpretation of the rules of the game by the match referees was in good correlation with the referee expert panel 3.The most frequent mechanism for ankle injuries was player-to-player contact with impact on the medial aspect of the lower leg or ankle of the injured player.4.The two most frequent injury mechanisms for head incidents were elbow-to-head and head-to-head contact.