Mark Herrick's training aid could ease heading concerns in football

What began as an idea to help improve heading proficiency in football could, in these fast-changing and uncertain times, turn out to be something which helps ensure that one of the sport’s signature but now increasingly controversial skills, can safely retain its place in the game, writes Liam Mackey.

Former Cork City and Galway United midfielder Mark Herrick is the man behind Headrite Sports, a new Galway-based company which is marketing an innovative training aid for teaching and improving heading skills while maximising player welfare. And although aimed at all age groups, he believes it has an especially important application in safely introducing youngsters to heading at a time when, in the United States, the old art has been banned for children under the age of 11.

It was news of the introduction of that ban in 2015, in response to growing concern about the health implications of repetitive heading of a football, which made Mark Herrick realise that what began as what he calls his “mission” to improve heading ability was now going to take that original concept into “a more complex and dangerous field”. He fully appreciated, he says, that he would have to do due diligence on all the health and safety implications.