New guidelines on heading set to be revealed

FOOTBALL: Heading guidelines for training in the professional and adult game are set to be in place for the start of next season, the Premier League has announced.

Campaigners such as Dawn Astle and Chris Sutton have long called for a reduction in the amount of heading done in training at senior level, as a means to limit the risk to players of long-term brain injury.

The Premier League announced the launch of two studies to measure the impact of different types of heading.

One will involve men’s youth team and senior women’s team players at Manchester City and Liverpool wearing mouthpieces in training, which relay real-time data to touchline analysts.

The outcome of the research will inform the working group’s decision-making on heading guidelines. Crucially, the study will also give insight into any differences between men and women in terms of heading impact, an area where there has been very little research in the past.

The second project will involve Second Spectrum, the Premier League’s tracking and analytics provider. It will compare match-tracking data from the 2019-20 season with results from the mouthguard study.

n GOLF: South Africa’s Daniel Van Tonder defeated Thailand’s Jazz Janewattananond in a play-off at the Kenya Savannah Classic to claim his first European Tour title and a fifth win in his last 13 events.

Van Tonder birdied the third extra hole at Karen Country Club after the leading pair had finished tied on 21 under par following a day of remarkable low scoring.

The top four players all shot final rounds of 64, but England’s Sam Horsfield and Scotland’s Calum Hill both crucially bogeyed the 72nd hole to miss out on the play-off by a single shot.