Phasing out Heading from Football - Yay or Nay?

[Bruce Wayne]

Do you expect a 'flat-line' across the whole of society? In everything? What is the comparison with boxing? With rugby? The same? Different?

Comparisons will always show differences. Because nothing in life is uniform...

Jeez...

I don't get the fuss tbh. No one seriously suggested that Petr Cech was wrong for wearing headwear for so long because of the tackle where he got a whack to the head, just as no one seriously complains that rugby plays aren't given extended time off after concussion, even though historically they would simply have shaken themselves down and got on with it.

I don't think anyone has seriously suggested that heading should be banned, but if there are ways to make it safer, why wouldn't it be explored? As Stewart says, life changes as we gain new knowledge (and with respect, he's a professor of neuroscience, so I'll take his opinion over your own on the impact of heading on the brain).

Incidentally, with regards to your personal anecdote, the research was looking at people over (I think) 40 years of age, of whom about 1.5% in the control group had a neurological disease, versus 5% across all footballers, and around 7% for those footballers who had the longest career. They were also around 3.5 times more likely to die from a neurodegenerative disease than the control group.

I know, as Goat said earlier, that Stewart is not a fan of headgear (although it's not clear what he bases his assessment on), but if we can find a way to make heading safer, why would we not do it?

 

[Drico]

If the evidence continues to mount up, I think it will inevitably force a radical change in the game. Speaking as an Irishman living in Germany, my sense is that the continentals would adapt more easily than those in the UK/Ireland. The game is called "football" for a reason. That's not to say the continentals do not love their headers - heck, Germany probably had the greatest exponent of the art of all-time, Horst Hrubesch from Hamburg, "The Man They Call The Monster". Der Kopfballungeheuer - the header monster - was a beastly force of nature, feasting on the bananenflanken of Manni Kaltz, the best crosser of a ball in the world. Even so, I think the Germans and other Europeans would be more open to change - or would at least adapt quicker, if needs be - if the science becomes too hard to ignore.

People need to accept that the game we see today has little resemblance to the game of even, say, 1981. The backpass rule, the offside rule - which has revolutionised how the game is now played in terms of opening up available space on the pitch making man-marking, beloved of the 1980s, effectively redundant - and the ban on the tackle from behind (allowing Messi and Ronaldo to play deep into their thirties when the greats of the 1980s were crippled in their 20s) mean that comparisons are invidious. If today's rules pertained in 1981, the greats of the day, Maradona, Rummenigge, Zico, etc., would have played at least 100 more games in their careers as they would not have had to deal with Claudio Gentile, Antonio Camacho, and The Butcher of Bilbao, Andoni Goikoetxea. Bernd Schuster's career would have been substantially different. Maradona may have been less susceptible to the drugs he dabbled in while recovering from the Butcher's brutality and tending his broken ankle. If Messi and Ronaldo had had to operate in the same climate, I have no doubt they would have both been retired years ago - and their goals and games statistics would be dramatically lower.

At the end of the day, I love a good physical battle. Hell, I loved Jack Charlton's Ireland team and even our thoroughbred Everton side of the 80s were as hard as nails. But the game will have to eventually adapt, and I see no problem with it eventually transmogrifying away from aerial bombardment to a more sophisticated and skilled grass-based game. I suspect ball technology and, perhaps, compression-resistant head gear may become as de rigueur as shin pads and goalkeeper gloves - things that were clearly considered the possessions of the soft only shortly prior to 1981.

 

[Old Blue 2]

I don't get the fuss tbh. No one seriously suggested that Petr Cech was wrong for wearing headwear for so long because of the tackle where he got a whack to the head, just as no one seriously complains that rugby plays aren't given extended time off after concussion, even though historically they would simply have shaken themselves down and got on with it.

I don't think anyone has seriously suggested that heading should be banned, but if there are ways to make it safer, why wouldn't it be explored? As Stewart says, life changes as we gain new knowledge (and with respect, he's a professor of neuroscience, so I'll take his opinion over your own on the impact of heading on the brain).

Incidentally, with regards to your personal anecdote, the research was looking at people over (I think) 40 years of age, of whom about 1.5% in the control group had a neurological disease, versus 5% across all footballers, and around 7% for those footballers who had the longest career. They were also around 3.5 times more likely to die from a neurodegenerative disease than the control group.

I know, as Goat said earlier, that Stewart is not a fan of headgear (although it's not clear what he bases his assessment on), but if we can find a way to make heading safer, why would we not do it?

Neither do I, Bruce.

It's simply not quantifiable. It is not a sanitised, definite, thing like cancer, or a heart attack. That's all I'm saying. No professor of this, that, or the other can say with 100% certainly that Person A heading a ball at the age of 20 has dementia at the age of 80 directly because of it. As I said, it's simply not quantifiable.

My last post on the subject. There's nothing more to say...

 

[Baines' left foot]

Ban boxing then, and rugby, american football, boxing, MMA/UFC.

 

[Bruce Wayne]

Neither do I, Bruce.

It's simply not quantifiable. It is not a sanitised, definite, thing like cancer, or a heart attack. That's all I'm saying. No professor of this, that, or the other can say with 100% certainly that Person A heading a ball at the age of 20 has dementia at the age of 80 directly because of it. As I said, it's simply not quantifiable.

My last post on the subject. There's nothing more to say...

Well we're fairly early on in the studying of it, but there is a pretty definite association between rugby and brain damage, as per this from earlier this year

Professional rugby may be associated with changes in brain structure | Imperial News | Imperial College London

Participation in elite adult rugby may be associated with changes in brain structure.

www.imperial.ac.uk

We're at an early stage of understanding this stuff, and yet, despite all of that, you and others simply want to shut down the debate entirely and not bother looking into it any further. I find that baffling.

 

[Zezti]

Neither do I, Bruce.

It's simply not quantifiable. It is not a sanitised, definite, thing like cancer, or a heart attack. That's all I'm saying. No professor of this, that, or the other can say with 100% certainly that Person A heading a ball at the age of 20 has dementia at the age of 80 directly because of it. As I said, it's simply not quantifiable.

My last post on the subject. There's nothing more to say...

Nobody is saying "if you head a ball you will get dementia", they're saying "repeatedly heading a ball over the course of a professional's career strongly indicates an increased risk of developing dementia".
Your posts strike me as you desperately wanting there to be no evidence to suggest a change to something you like, rather than giving any kind of legitimate reason to dispute the work of people much smarter and qualified than any of us.

 

[wm02]

I wonder if in the future more players will decide to preemptively wear the headgear prior to any type of injury. I wouldn’t be surprised if this ends up being the case in my lifetime as the research continues.
On a side note, my father used to attend NY Rangers ice hockey games in the ‘50s and early ‘60s. They had a goalkeeper, Gump Worsley, who would play without a face mask.
Early first period he gets drilled in the forehead with a puck going in excess of 80mph. He’s out cold. Motionless. They put him on a stretcher and bring him back to the locker room.
But then once the third period starts, Gump is right back out there in the net with his head all bandaged up.
Different times

 

[WA Toffee]

Tell me how my heading a ball when I was playing for the school, and then playing Sunday League in the 1960s and 1970s, will have ultimately led DIRECTLY to me developing dementia at some future date, and I will then concede the point to you and Bruce W. The fact is, it CANNOT be done. People simply want the one to lead to the other. There is no logical premise that can be advanced that can positively prove the one with the other.

The fact is, having also played rugby at school for four years (scrum half), the likelihood of playing THAT game, with its attendant being clobbered time and time again by opposition forwards over 4 years, has a far greater causal chance of contributing ultimately to brain damage/deterioration than heading a football occasionally...

So rather than actually read the research, you have decided to just make up what you think it says, and have decided it is wrong. Cool story.

 

[Drico]

Ban boxing then, and rugby, american football, boxing, MMA/UFC.

Lots of reasonable people would, actually, particularly those sports that are demonstrably exploitative (as in played by an overwhelmingly underprivileged social class). Certainly, while I'm no authoritarian and would therefore allow highly regulated versions of those sports continue (mainly because many of the practitioners of those sports are admirable), I definitely wouldn't be allowing my child to box or cage fight. I'd have issues with him playing American Football and rugby, too, but not so much with martial arts which appear to me to be tightly disciplined and less open to exploitation. Call me a middle-class wimp, but there are lots of sports around where the risk of injury is far more acceptable. Educated people will make an informed choice and sports that refuse to mitigate egregious risks will lose participants.

In parts of Europe, football is played by a wider spectrum of society than it is in England. Simon Kuper has shown that in England it has largely become a working class preserve over the last 50 years - certainly representation in the national team has been overwhelmingly working class (as measured by the occupation of players' fathers). In Germany, the middle class are far more embedded in the game. Why does this matter? It means the Germans have a more diverse pick from which to select - and diversity brings more solutions and greater creativity when faced with different situations. It's one of the reason they have been so successful. The danger of ignoring mounting scientific evidence is that it will turn off the parents - often mothers - of talented middle class kids who will not want their child to engage in what could be a very dangerous game. We need to ask ourselves then why is it ok for working class kids to be so blithely exposed to such elevated risk?

In Ireland, one of the most spectacularly physical field games of all - hurling - has addressed what were legitimate safety fears by making helmets mandatory for all players about 20 years ago. As dangerous as hurling it - everyone has a weapon, basically, and is entitled to wield it in the general direction of the ball - I'd allow my child to play it. The risks of needless serious injury or worse have been substantially reduced and it is now, arguably, more popular than ever before.

 

[Bruce Wayne]

Would you look at that

Heading the ball is linked to cognitive impairment in retired professional footballers: new research

We found the more headers former professional footballers made over their careers, the lower they tended to score on a memory test.

theconversation.com

 

[Calvin Aldi]

We've been helping with research all season by banning ourselves from heading at set pieces.

 

[ClausThomsen]

"The day they ban heading I'm done with the game."
"The day they ban 50/50's I'm done with the game."

These are the same people who are continually on the verge of walking away from the game or Everton because of one reason or another yet they never actually do so.

I hope they ban heading just to call them out.

 

[Martin Alvito]

Would you look at that

Heading the ball is linked to cognitive impairment in retired professional footballers: new research

We found the more headers former professional footballers made over their careers, the lower they tended to score on a memory test.

theconversation.com

You mean I was right to hate all those heading drills, as I felt like my brain was being scrambled every time? Go figure.

 

[The binman chronicles]

"The day they ban heading I'm done with the game."
"The day they ban 50/50's I'm done with the game."

These are the same people who are continually on the verge of walking away from the game or Everton because of one reason or another yet they never actually do so.

I hope they ban heading just to call them out.

Kind of twisted thinking there. If your heroes growing up were people like Royle/Gray/Sharp/Ferguson etc. and you happen to love a headed goal or even a goalline clearance then this rule fundamentally changes the game you want to watch. Of course the game moves on over time with the backpack rule, more subs, goaline tech and VAR, but they don't change the basic rules of the game we love.

Our goal in the 95 Cup Final wouldn't be allowed in this world, some of the goals that saved us from relegation too. For long periods of time we have needed the equalising quality of getting into the box and causing a bit of chaos. All gone. By all means reduce the risk but football without heading is just glorified 5 a side and I can't say I'm interested in watching it.

If you're happy with it that's your preference, but goading it to happen is a bit much as there are others who really appreciate that side of the game and would be fairly devastated.

 

[Brennan]

Nobody is saying "if you head a ball you will get dementia", they're saying "repeatedly heading a ball over the course of a professional's career strongly indicates an increased risk of developing dementia".
Your posts strike me as you desperately wanting there to be no evidence to suggest a change to something you like, rather than giving any kind of legitimate reason to dispute the work of people much smarter and qualified than any of us.

This is reminding mE of something, but I can’t qUite put my finger on it….