Repetitive head impacts in football must be treated as a public health issue, the Government has been urged.
Judith Gates, the founder of the Head Safe Football charity, has written to Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy calling on the Government to act.
Gates’ husband Bill, a former Middlesbrough defender, died in October last year. Subsequent postmortem examinations found he had chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a progressive neurodegenerative disease.
Her letter to Nandy asks the Government to designate repetitive head impacts (RHI) as a public health issue, citing research which has highlighted the increased risk to professional footballers of developing neurodegenerative disease.
This morning, HSF's Founder @JudithMGates took a seat on the @BBCBreakfast red sofa alongside @jonkay01 and @sallynugent to spotlight a critical issue, Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) and the devastating impact repetitive head injuries in football can have on the brain. pic.twitter.com/0cvkJf1e4T
— Head Safe Football (@headsafecharity) December 9, 2024
Gates calls on the Government to promote the Head Safe Football slogan ‘Think Head Safe: reduce heading in training’.
Her letter suggests adding public health messaging on footballs, football-related packaging and equipment, and for posters, signs, messages and motifs on uniforms to promote the key message in training environments.
“Our commitment is wholly focused on player safeguarding,” her letter concluded.
“As his legacy, my late husband asked his family to try to ensure that future players are protected from the disease which cruelly devastated his life together with the lives of so many others. We have a promise to keep.”
An inquest is now scheduled to conclude on January 13 concerning the cause of Bill Gates’ death. His widow hopes the coroner will include that it was caused by his repeated heading of a ball.
Gates also calls on the Government to extend existing heading bans further throughout youth football, while simultaneously introducing specific and monitored limits to heading in training throughout the game.
She also wants an independent body to be established to oversee brain health and safety. The letter also calls for a requirement on coroners to record CTE and other brain diseases in professional players and those with a history of playing contact sports in order to establish a more detailed understanding of the prevalence.
The letter to Nandy describes the prevalence of CTE among athletes in contact sports as an “epidemic”.
Two former Premier League players also told the BBC about their health fears as a result of heading balls.
Former Newcastle defender Steve Howey has undergone scans which show his brain is in cognitive decline.
“It’s only when you hear the different tragic stories of some of the ex-players, you kind of think that, ‘wow, you know this, this could happen to me,’” said Howey, who has been part of a legal claim against the Football Association and other bodies that they failed to do enough to protect players against the risks of heading or from concussion.
Former Manchester United defender Gary Pallister said he experienced migraines during his career.
“They were quite debilitating, you know: vision, speech, the tingling and the violent headaches. It would be like that for hours, until eventually I would throw up, and that would be the start of the release of the pain,” he said.
“I think at this moment I’m OK, I can do my sudokus, try to do a little bit of brain training. But it is enough to know what I did go through with the migraines and the concussions and being knocked out, that the potential is there for me to have brain damage.”
The FA is phasing out deliberate heading in youth football up to under-11s level by 2026-27.
Heading is banned in training by the FA for under-11s, and then strictly limited up to under-18 level.
In adult grassroots football, it is recommended that heading practice is limited to 10 headers per session and only one session a week where heading practice is included. Players should be responsible for monitoring their own heading activity.
In the professional game, players should limit their heading practice to 10 “higher force” headers per week. “Higher force” headers include those from crosses, corners, free-kicks, or long passes.
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