These are among the key findings from the 2008 AFL injury report, which was released by the AFL on Wednesday.
The annual report, now in its 17th year, is the longest running medical survey conducted in world sport.
AFL football operations manager Adrian Anderson said the reduction of head and neck injuries was due to recent law changes to the game.
"The No.1 thing, the most pleasing thing, is to see head and neck injuries at an all-time low. There is no doubt that this is a direct result of introducing rules to protect players from head and neck injuries," he said.
"The main one is the rule to protect players with their head down over the ball and the other one is to protect players from head-high bumps.
"Those two rules have been instrumental in making sure that we have the lowest rate of head and neck injuries we've ever had."
With shoulder injuries still a concern, the AFL is set to add further research funding into the injuries.
"The trend is upwards in shoulder injuries and we are going to closely monitor that," Anderson said.
"That will be the No.1 subject of our grand final medical symposium this year – shoulder injuries – and the AFL research board will be commissioning projects specifically to examine the increase in shoulder injuries and the causes of them."
Anderson said the incidence of shoulder injuries had risen largely due to an increase in the number of tackles.
He added there was no evidence to suggest there were more shoulder injuries because of increased head and neck protection in bumping contests.
"The rate of tackling has pretty much doubled from what it was about 2000 or 2001," he said.
"The technique being used in tackling and the speed of the players when they hit each other and bump each other [has improved significantly]."
Soft-tissue injuries, such as hamstring injuries, were also another problem area.
"We have a program looking at the rate of use of interchange in recent years and the expansion and the use of interchange and whether that's a contributing factor to higher rates of soft-tissue injuries," Anderson said.
"We don't have an answer on that yet, but we're continuing to examine that closely."
Anderson said a drop in recurrence injuries from last year was another important finding from the report.
"That's attributed to conservative management of injuries at club level," he said.
"You'll see that often players are being kept out a bit longer than they have been in the past, which is having an affect on reducing recurrence rates of injuries."
