A move towards banning children from heading balls in training in Scotland because of the links between football and dementia has been welcomed as a “positive step” by the campaigner Dawn Astle, who has urged other governing bodies follow its lead.
The Scottish Football Association is finalising its plans but it is understood that it wants to “lead the way” on the issue. The BBC says that a ban on children under the age of 12 from heading could be introduced within weeks.
The United States has had similar restrictions in place since 2015 but Scotland would be the first European country to impose such a policy.
The SFA’s move follows a landmark study by the University of Glasgow, published in October, which found that former professional footballers are three and a half times more likely to suffer from dementia and other serious neurological diseases.
However it was unable to establish whether the cause of the higher levels of brain disease was due to repeated concussions, heading leather footballs, or some other factor.
Astle, the daughter of the former West Bromwich Albion striker Jeff Astle who died in 2002 of what a coroner said was an “industrial disease” partly caused by heading heavy footballs during his career, said she was very pleased at the SFA’s commitment.
“We applaud them for trying to put things in place to reduce the risk and not hanging on and hanging on and keep saying ‘more research, more research’,” she said. “I hope that children in other countries – English, Welsh, whatever – mean as much to our specific FAs as clearly Scottish children do to theirs.
“It’s a very positive step to reduce the risk and make sure their kids are OK. My dad’s dementia started at some point, didn’t it, and it’s always been my belief that it manifested in my dad – although no one was aware of it – when heading footballs as a kid.”
A spokesman for the SFA said it had worked closely with the authors of the University of Glasgow research to look at practical steps to take “a responsible but proportionate approach” to the findings.
“To that end, productive discussions have taken place … on proactive, preventative measures with particular focus on younger age groups,” it said in a statement. “It is our intention to finalise those proposals with the relevant stakeholders in early course and further details will be announced thereafter.”
However the English FA has no plans to change its position that heading is safe. In a statement it said there was no evidence to suggest that heading in youth football would be more of a risk than at other stages in a professional footballer’s career.
“Heading is actually significantly less common in children’s games,” the statement added. “Our analysis shows that on average there are only around 1.5 headers per game in youth football.
“The Medical & Football Advisory group currently don’t advise any changes to the rules of the game, but they have supported practical guidelines for heading practice which are common sense and in line with modern coaching practice.”
The FA’s stance was backed by Rangers manager Steven Gerrard who said he believed that heading practice still had a place in grassroots football.
“I used to love heading balls, probably from the age of four,” he said. “So I wouldn’t take it away from them completely because they will be watching their heroes every day on the TV, heading and scoring goals.
“But you can certainly do things; you can help them by making the balls smaller or lighter, or doing heading in a different way, without using the heavy-case balls.”
However the former Celtic striker John Hartson backed the SFA, saying: “There have been some serious situations where players have lost their lives and ex-legends suffering from dementia, so I’m glad the SFA are leading the rest of football and doing something about it.”
The brain injury association Headway has called for more research to fully understand what risks are linked to heading lightweight modern footballs.
“There are questions about the age limit and speculation suggests this will be 12 years,” it said. “This infers that a child of 13 years is safe to head the ball. How do we know this to be the case? The difficulty we face, in the absence of meaningful research relating to the modern game, is where we draw the line in terms of acceptable risk versus the rewards we know healthy exercise can bring.”
The leader of the University of Glasgow research, Professor Willie Stewart, favours a wider reduction of heading. “A move to reduce head impacts in youth sports is a good idea but I would caution that that’s probably not enough,” he said. “It’s not enough just to say: ‘Let’s take heading out of the game in under-12s.’
“I think we need to look across the entire game – amateurs, seniors, professionals – and say: ‘Where else can we make changes to be effective?’ And not just in football, look across all sports and think: ‘What could we do differently?’”
The Guardian Sport
