Primary school children have been banned from heading in football training in England, Northern Ireland and Scotland.
The Football Associations of each country announced heading will no longer be allowed in the "foundation phase" - primary school children - and a graduated approach to heading in training in under-12s to under-16s football.
The ban does not apply to matches because of the limited number of headers which occur in youth games.
The announcement comes after a study showed former footballers were three-and-a-half times more likely to die of neurodegenerative disease than age-matched members of the general population.
https://news.sky.com/story/primary-school-children-banned-from-heading-in-football-training-11942145
Comments
However the study which this is based on is pretty seriously flawed from a research and medical perspective.
I got my girlfriend who has a masters in medical stats to have a quick look at it and work out what was going on.
If I remember correctly the study was based on players who had played football in Scotland back in the pre or early post war years and had since died. It completely didn't control for factors such as the footballs very different now weight of them and absorbing water etc. The change in concussion protocols in modern football, back then would play on through concussion which is much more damaging long term than the actual concussion. It compared footballers in Scotland to whole of UK population - not accounting for general health differences between the two. Its a very small sample size to be basing this sort of action on.
Being a professional sportsperson and leading an active and more healthy lifestyle means you are less likely to die from other issues which may get you first i.e. heart disease, cancers. So the people in the study would in general live longer which in itself increases the chances of dementia etc.
The main research problem was it that it only looked at death rate rather than the actual incidence rate which beyond the obvious - you may have dementia but die of something else - it is statistically a wrong approach - for some complicated reason my girlfriend explained and I cant remember - I think I might have explained it on the other thread.
The study didn't actually claim to do a lot of the above (i.e. it was aware of its flaws) but it has been used as though it does. This study should be treated as "we may have potentially identified a possible link - maybe football should fund some further much more complete and detailed research". instead it has been treated as a definitive link and action taken based on it which is wrong and I'm sure the authors would say it was wrong.
As I said I actually support banning it in primary schools but we need more research before we jump to any further conclusions.
Those players (such as Matt Tees), also clashed heads countless times, which IMHO caused more damage than simply heading of a ball......but that’s only my opinion of course.
Therefore the study is flawed.
The one thing in the paper I would call a flaw is in using death rate rather than incidence rate. You would struggle to find any statiction anywhere who would accept that as the right measure. It's wrong in every way.
I'm also an analyst myself (though applied to economics) and critiquing the methodology of research papers such as this one was a significant part of my degree. I feel somewhat qualified to make these points.
Thankfully once we get Brexit done we can get on with letting English kids head old-fashioned heavy English footballs again rather than these new fangled foreign ones.
Champions League???? SWIVEL!