FAI facing pressure to ban heading ball at underage grades

The Football Association of Ireland is facing pressure to introduce a ban on youngsters heading the ball due to health concerns.

Age-appropriate limits on the amount of heading U18s do in training are set to be introduced by the English FA, coming fresh on the heels of the Scottish FA hatching plans for a total ban on U12s.

Further afield, US Soccer in 2015 “eliminated heading for children 10 and under and limited heading in practice for children between the ages of 11 and 13”.

This stemmed from litigation by a group of players and parents who claimed there were 50,000 concussion incidents a year in American junior soccer.

Guidelines are being finalised in England to impose restrictions to address health fears concerning the impact of heading balls.

The FA had in 2015 convened an independent panel of head injury and concussion specialists with a brief to review guidelines in the English amateur and professional game.

Their action was promoted by the work of the Jeff Astle Foundation, a campaign group founded in honour of the former West Bromwich Albion and England striker who died in 2002 at the age of 59.

Astle, who was known for his heading talents, was the first British player confirmed to have died from chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) — a progressive, degenerative brain disease once known as “punch-drunk” as it was first noted in ex-boxers.

It is thought to be a consequence of suffering multiple concussions, such as the low-level impact of heading a football. A landmark study concluded last year ascertained that former professional footballers are three and a half times more likely to suffer from dementia and other serious neurological diseases, confirming a long-suspected link between the sport and brain damage.

A 22-month research project by the University of Glasgow’s Brain Injury Group also discovered there was a five-fold increase in the risk of Alzheimer’s, a four-fold increase in motor neurone disease and a two-fold increase in Parkinson’s.

The report 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’s daughter, Dawn, has welcomed what she believes are overdue measures taken by football authorities in the UK.

The FA’s head of medicine Dr Charlotte Cowie said in December last year that the governing body’s independently-chaired task force was reviewing the guidance on heading in youth football.

The intention of any changes, Cowie said, would be to “decrease overall exposure to heading without compromising technique”.

The FA and Professional Footballers’ Association jointly funded the FIELD Study, with its first findings published in October last year.

The leader of the study, Professor Willie Stewart, said last month that restrictions on heading should be introduced across the board, including in training in senior professional football.

“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.

“We haven’t got the cast-iron evidence of direct causality (between heading and health outcomes) but what we have is more than enough evidence, adding up over the decades and right up to the FIELD study at the end of last year, which says there’s a strong association between contact sports and development of dementia.

“And when we look at what is the common factor, exposure to head injury and head impact is the one thing that stands through.”

The FAI, which recommends weighted footballs for different age-groups, were unavailable for comment on their English counterpart’s new policy.