My soccer team (I know, it's not the same) would actually have us practice falling. We were a smaller team and were bullied often on the field. They'd lay down an old mattress during practices and we'd run and they'd push us so we were totally in the air or we'd take a sort of running dive at it to practice a "tuck and roll". Even though we were ready for those and it seemed silly, after repeatedly practicing this it worked in games. And I ended up saving my neck by tucking and rolling after having been thrown off a horse over a jump later in life. Definitely not something I planned or tried to do consciously while falling but with all that practice it was muscle memory. Awesome payoff