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is no good evidence that, with normal football boots versus blades, artificial pitches increase risk of lower limb injury.

“The footwear the player wears can be an influence. It used to be said that blades increase torsion of the knee and certainly in the older pitches that was true. But there isn’t such strong evidence that that is still the case with the new 3G pitches.”

Dearing added: “People draw an association rather than causation. You see a professional athlete getting injured on an artificial surface and then, as was the case with Steven Gerrard, somebody says it is because of the pitch.

“Well, no, these things just happen. There are lots and lots of professional football and rugby players who get

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“Some studies have shown that if you are playing on a slightly hard uneven surface, as you would, on the pitches down in England at the moment, that is a greater risk than artificial pitches. It isn’t cut and dried.”

Dearing feels more football clubs in Scotland should be following the lead of their rugby counterparts and taking simple measures to prevent players from suffering serious injuries.

“Clubs should be doing more to mitigate against lower limb injury,” he said. “For the last five or six years there has been really, really strong evidence that doing specific warm-up drills reduces lower limb injury by between 30 and 60 per cent.

“FIFA have something called the FIFA 11+ drill. As far back as 10 years ago, there was a programme in America called PEP, Preventing Injury and Enhance Performance.

“Rugby players have really taken this on board. The SRU now has a programme based on that. It is not clear how well that has been taken up by footballers. But I see a lot of lower league and junior players who just don’t do this.

“We don’t look after our athletes. In Scotland we can’t afford to haemorrhage talent at a young age. There are steps which can be taken to reduce the risk of lower limb injury. If you are doing that then it doesn’t matter what surface you are playing on.

“The difficulty is with people listening. Often older managers are of the opinion that ‘we have always done it like this’. So you say ‘but you’ve always had injuries’.”

Dearing admitted that artificial surfaces had been shown to increase ankle strains – which in turn can lead to serious knee injuries – but stressed that a bespoke warm-up can prevent that

“The likelihood of suffering an ankle injury is reduced by proper conditioning and the warm-up. All lower limbs injuries are reduced by doing that.”