DOYLE IS RIGHT TO PUT HEALTH FIRST
Striker’s retirement highlights how soccer is not immune from debate on concussion in sport and must act quickly to protect its players
ON the website of the Football Association of Ireland, there is a video containing an interview with team doctor Alan Byrne.
The subject is concussion, and the first image used to illustrate the piece is a still of Byrne with Kevin Doyle.
The shot takes on a poignant coincidence after Doyle announced his retirement. His profile and the unadorned language he used to break the news have given concussion a relevance in soccer it only infrequently enjoys.
And as a result it obliges the game to start having the sort of uncomfortable conversations on player safety that has left rugby flustered for years now.
It was only ever a question of when soccer would be confronted by a high-profile concussion retirement. Rugby has been struggling with the problem for years.
Bernard Jackman and John Fogarty led the way in this country in highlighting the effect it has on players, but the response of World Rugby to the problem has been repeatedly criticised, from both within the organisation and within the medical community, too.
Fears about the long-term damage concussion can cause to sportspeople did not originate in that sport, though. It was the increasing number of tragedies in American football that turned concussion into a growing concern.
Bennet Omalu, whose story was later turned into a Hollywood film, was the doctor who discovered chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative disease of the brain linked to chronic health problems, premature deaths and suicide in retired American footballers.
His work eventually led to the National Football League agreeing a compensation deal with former players that runs to hundreds of millions of dollars and is expected to reach billions.
However, the concussion debate in that sport remains highly contentious. Only last week, America’s ridiculous president bemoaned the safety measures introduced into American football in order to reduce the impact on players.
‘Because you know, today if you hit too hard — 15 yards,’ screamed Donald Trump. ‘Throw him out of the game. They had that last week, I watched for a couple of minutes. Two guys, just really, beautiful tackle. Boom! Fifteen yards. The referee goes on television, his wife’s so proud of him. They’re ruining the game! They’re ruining the game.’
The oaf is nobody’s idea of an everyman, but his views on the rule changes in the sport chime with a strong strain in public opinion. This is a problem rugby has, too; traditionalists and the plain ignorant protest at what they see as the sanitisation of their game.
Soccer will have this problem, too. While it is not as physically punishing as rugby or American football, its problem with concussion as highlighted in the Doyle case is actually more fundamental: heading the ball is one of the game’s foundational skills, and so the news of a wellknown player attributing his retirement to this is enormously problematic for the sport and those who rule it.
‘This year it has been clear to me that heading the ball was becoming problematic and causing me to have repeated headaches,’ wrote Doyle in his retirement statement.
‘Two concussions this season and numerous others over the years have made this more concerning. After consulting the experts in this field, it has been decided that to avoid the possibility of these symptoms becoming more serious and permanent, I will be hanging up my boots for good.’
As Doyle’s statement shows, he does not attribute heading the ball to causing concussions, but at the very least it is complicating problems caused by earlier concussions. And research has shown that an initial concussion can be compromised by successive blows to the head. The great fear is that heading itself causes concussions; were that to be established, then it would give soccer an existential problem of the type faced by rugby and American football. Those sports are trying to fulfil their responsibilities to players, especially underage ones, while facilitating contests in which the physical collisions are proven to cause serious, lifelong damage.
Soccer is not at that pass, yet. However, a study in the US published earlier this year made for alarming news. Published in the journal Neurology, a survey of over 200 amateur soccer players found that players who frequently head the ball are three times more likely to suffer symptoms of concussion than those who don’t.
The name Jeff Astle has been current in the days since Doyle’s retirement. Astle, a revered West Bromwich Albion and England striker, died in 2002 at the age of 59 of CTE, with the damage caused by repeatedly heading the heavier balls used in the 1960s and 1970s blamed for his suffering. His family have since started a foundation and say they have been contacted by the families of more than 300 former players displaying the symptoms Astle did before he died. That is the extreme manifestation of the problem that has ended Doyle’s career, and the reaction of the Wexford man to medical opinion was prompt and sensible. But news that his career has ended must create alarm in the sport. Omalu spoke in Dublin earlier this year and his message is an unflagging one: sport must adapt to the dangers of concussion and do all it can to protect its players, and especially younger players. In that connection, he called for those under the age of 18 to be stopped from playing rugby, and he has also demanded that soccer for Under 18s include a ban on heading the ball. His views have met with institutional unease in both American football and rugby. Because of the relatively uncommon nature of concussion in soccer, it has not been the issue it mushroomed into in the other games. The retirement of Kevin Doyle could start to change that. There is no such thing as too much talk about a problem like this one.
The great fear is that heading itself can cause concussions