Limits on heading to be introduced next season
The English football authorities are preparing to formally limit heading across all adult training this year as part of their strategy to tackle the national game’s dementia crisis.
As revealed by The Telegraph in February, the Premier League has been leading a working group of football’s main stakeholders to formulate official guidance that would make England the first country in the world to restrict heading.
The Premier League has now announced two new studies to help inform protocols which “are expected to be implemented ahead of the 2021-22 season”. Players from the Manchester City and Liverpool under-23, under-18 and women’s teams will immediately begin trialling mouthguards which measure the forces involved with heading. This will then be used alongside match-tracking data from last season to inform guidelines that will also follow consultations with clubs, players, coaches and medical staff.
The commitment to next season as a target date is significant, after campaigners Dawn Astle and Chris Sutton told Parliament on Tuesday that football could no longer be trusted to lead on this issue and urged government intervention.
A coroner ruled in 2002 that Astle’s father, Jeff, had died from industrial disease as a result of a career spent heading footballs, but research which revealed the much wider scale of the problem was only commissioned in 2017.
The Telegraph has repeatedly advocated heading limits in training as part of its five-year “Tackle Football’s Dementia Scandal” campaign.
Experts have suggested provisional limits of 20 headers per day and at least two days between training sessions. Charlotte Cowie, the Football Association’s head of medicine, had suggested that new guidelines would deal with those coaches who still put on “inappropriate” prolonged heading sessions.
There is now an acknowledgement from the FA that heading is one of the most likely risk factors for an increased dementia risk.
“The research studies we are undertaking are just one example of our commitment to this important issue,” Richard Masters, the Premier League chief executive, said.