It’s our call to accept all the risks
...BUT MORE CAN BE DONE
ANY boxer who walks into a ring knows that one punch could land him with permanent brain damage.
I’m sure Patrick Day, the middleweight who died earlier this month following a fight with Charles Conwell, knew there was a chance he wouldn’t leave that ring alive.
Equally, though, I bet he never approached any of his 22 fights thinking ‘I might not get through this’.
It’s the same in Formula One. Whenever Lewis Hamilton steps into his Mercedes, he risks his life. But he’ll never sit on that start line thinking ‘I hope I come out of this in one piece’. His friends and family will, but he’ll be plotting how to win. That’s the mentality of a sportsman.
Everyone who plays professional sport knows what they are getting into. They know the risks and dangers. But nobody forces you into it. It’s a choice.
Choice
It’s why I doubt any footballer or coach will change his behaviour, despite new research showing that footballers are three-and-a-half times more likely to develop neurological conditions.
Looking back to my playing days, I used to do drill after drill after drill. I worked under managers who’d stand on the halfway line and literally launch balls at you for 20 minutes. Your job was to head them away.
Tommy Johnson was like that at Celtic. You’d do five minutes. Then ten. Then half an hour. Forty-five minutes later, your head was pounding and you physically had to stop.
At youth level, that doesn’t happen any more. In my academy, for instance, we actively discourage heading.
If a kid heads the ball now and then, we don’t tell him off. But we don’t do drills, because their brains are still developing and that makes them vulnerable. It isn’t worth the risk.
But, at the professional level, heading is such an entrenched part of the game. What’s more, the people who do it are adults who have the right to make their own decisions.
I retired through a knee injury, but I was struggling for a long time. I was playing through pain, taking painkillers and injections. I couldn’t walk on a Tuesday, yet got wheeled out on Saturday and ran around like Wayne Sleep.
What damage has that done? I don’t know. But I knew the risks, so I can’t blame anyone but myself.
I remember playing for Coventry against Preston. I played the whole second half with a broken arm because I didn’t want to come off, potentially lose my place and then find out it was just bone bruising. Again, nobody made me do that.
Responsibility
As a player, you take full responsibility. You know your career could end at any time through a bad challenge. You know you could drop down dead with a hidden heart condition like Marc Vivien-Foe.
The heading side of the game is part and parcel of that, and it would be naive of people to think that footballers need protecting. We all know what we’re letting ourselves in for, even if it isn’t at the forefront of our minds.
What’s the solution? You can’t ban heading, but manufacturers are working hard to make footballs lighter and safer. Brain scans would help.
But you’d need a source of funding. The Premier League will be able to do it on a regular basis, but MRI scans cost £300-£400 a pop and you’ve got 25 players in every squad. How can struggling clubs in League Two afford to cover that?
It’s a difficult issue but one that - in my opinion - is a matter of personal choice for each and every player.