Heading needs kicked out of football

By Cameron Gray

The days of seeing this on a football pitch may be numbered

The widow of an ex-Dundee United player who died of dementia is calling for a ban on heading footballs on what would have been his 75th birthday.

Amanda Kopel, Frank Kopel’s widow, has backed Scottish lobby group Heading Out who are urging football’s governing bodies to begin moves to ban heading the ball.

Amanda believes that Frank’s diagnosis was down to the multiple collisions with other players when attempting to head that ball and him heading the ball thousands of times during decades of daily training.

It is argued that heading the ball is an unnecessary part of the sport that causes significant trauma to players’ heads that affect them later in life and make them more susceptible to diseases like Alzheimer’s and motor neurone disease. These diseases have affected many former pros like Frank, Stevie Chalmers and Mike Sutton.

Heading Out was formed by former STV journalist Mike Edwards, and the group aims to have headers banned in football by the end of 2030.

Mike said: “We learn from an early age not to handle the ball, surely we can learn not to head it either.”

Mike also added: “Not heading a ball will save players’ lives.”

Amanda said: “Football has to change because the game is a long, slow, certain killer while heading the ball is part of it.”

She also added: “The game is called football not headball and the rules have to change. Nobody should head a ball – particularly children.”

In a Glasgow University study researchers looked at health records for around 8,000 Scottish former professional footballers and 23,000 matched general population controls.

The research showed that goalkeepers who hardly head the ball have a similar risk to neurodegenerative diseases to the rest of the general public, whereas defenders who usually head the ball multiple times a game are at much greater risk to these types of diseases.

Professor Willie Stewart, who led the research, said: “We have already established that former professional footballers are at much greater risk of death from dementia and other neurodegenerative disorders than expected.

“The evidence is clear that the standout risk factor for neurodegenerative disease in football is exposure to head injury and head impacts. As such, a precautionary principal approach should be adopted to reduce, if not eliminate exposure to unnecessary head impacts and better manage head injuries in football and other sports.”