I played a couple seasons for Port Maggie’s juniors as a kid many many moons ago and there was an old trainer named Harro there. Harro was the dedicated ankle strapper and you had to see him before any training session or game or you weren’t allowed to run out. Old bugger ever went around and pulled socks down to check the lads who tried to sneak past him.
I’d be extremely surprised if there were AFL players out there not getting their ankles strapped religiously.
The literature on this is actually all over the shop.
Regarding the ankle it's shown to significantly reduce the likelihood of injury for athletes with history of previous ankle injuries but little to no effect for those without in most studies I've seen. So certainly makes sense if you've had ankle problems.
Regarding the knee it's been shown to significantly increase the stress on the ACL and MCL (most studies are on basketball but similar movements in AFL) whilst reducing the rotation on other parts of the knee. Basically the studies show that ankle taping is likely to increase the risk of certain knee injuries. This definitely makes sense when you consider that the ankle is a circuit breaker joint before the knee, if the ankle takes the force instead of transferring it then you're not likely to suffer a knee injury. Anecdotally I never had any kind of ankle injury but have done my ACL twice and both times I'd be shocked if I'd done the ACL if I'd done an ankle instead (both essentially non-contact injuries), did not have ankle tape for the second one fwiw.
Even the actual ankle stuff is all over the shop as far as effectiveness with a large portion of the studies concluding that it is possibly actually a placebo effect more than anything else.
I know I personally hated when teams required taped ankles, felt so restrictive and limiting as a player but that's probably largely because I wasn't used to it.
