FA UNDER FIRE AS IT HEADS FOR CHANGE

DEMENTIA FEARS LEAD TO RECOMMENDATION TO LIMIT HEADING IN TRAINING

THE Football Association has moved closer to backing efforts to reduce heading in professional football, as campaigners launched a series of blistering attacks over failures to deal with the dangers of concussion sooner.

The FA’s head of medicine Dr Charlotte Cowie told a parliamentary inquiry an independent expert panel advising the governing body had now recommended a reduction on the amount of heading practice at senior level, to go alongside guidelines already in place in youth football.

A trial of mouthguard technology will influence what limits are placed on heading training.

‘There is no argument about decreasing the exposure to the amount of heading in the game,’ she said.

‘The main exposure to heading is in training, and so limiting that training in terms of the number and type of heading as well is definitely the direction we need to go in.’ Football was yesterday criticised by campaigners for not doing enough to protect participants from long-term brain injury.

Dawn Astle referred to a previous dementia study which the FA and the Professional Footballers’ Association commissioned which she said was ‘shoved in a drawer’.

The death of her father Jeff, an England and West Brom striker, in 2002 was determined by a coroner to be the result of a neurodegenerative condition caused by repeated heading of a ball during his professional career. She said: ‘In any other industry, an inquest ruling like that would have had earthquake-like repercussions for that industry, but not football. My dad’s death didn’t matter to them.’

Former Blackburn and Celtic striker Chris Sutton, whose father Mike was also a professional footballer who died with dementia last year, said the government had to ‘take ownership’ of the issue, insisting the FA and the Professional Footballers’ Association had not done anywhere near enough. He said: ‘This meeting we are having today should have happened 20 years ago. The authorities have ignored, they have shunned, they have turned their back on what has been a massive issue. Hundreds of players have died – my father included.

‘This is something we need to deal with, and deal with fast. Gordon Taylor, who’s stepping down [as PFA chief executive], has blood on his hands. There are things we can do, preventative measures, and we need to do it now.’ Earlier this year, the PFA did announce measures aimed at addressing the dementia crisis in football.

A spokesperson said yesterday the PFA are ‘fully committed’ to ‘identifying areas within the game to protect current players’.

Cowie was questioned about what the FA’s annual research budget was, but she pointed out there was ‘no limit’ on what could be made available and each application had a differing cost.