soccer

English soccer heading guidance set for new season

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By Julian Guyer

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"Our footballers are five times more likely to die of Alzheimer's, four times more likely to die of motor neurone disease and twice as likely to die of Parkinson's."

Pretty damning statistics. I've had a few sore heads after games, and I can imagine that a career spent heading the ball on a daily basis can't be good for a man.

Grey insisted the brain of a child was at "significantly greater risk" than that of an adult, saying it was "time to consider an outright ban on heading the ball for younger children -- both in practice and match play".

When we were kids we often had practise games where the ball had to be played below shoulder height. This was to encourage passing and control skills. That was easy. To insert any kind of heading restrictions into the professional game itself would be difficult and would take years.

This is going to be a long fight between doctors and the football authorities. You can't take heading out of the game without fundamentally changing the game itself. Everton would be in the 4th division within a decade if they banned heading or headbutting.

So I'm in favour of anything that leads to this.

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