<p>Football without headers? My team has experienced it for the past two months, and we may not be ahead of the curve for long.<br /><br /></p>.<p>A new study by the University of Stirling in Scotland has found that a single session of heading the ball can significantly affect a player’s brain function and memory for 24 hours.<br /><br /> Tens of millions of people have played, and continue to play, the game without health problems. But as hints of evidence of a link between even small, subconcussive impacts and long-term damage begin to accumulate, it is time to at least consider the possibility that the leaders of the world’s most popular sport eventually could determine that heading is too much of a medical and legal risk to allow.<br /><br />The game, though diminished, surely would carry on. Tactics would be altered, but to eliminate heading would not be the same existential threat to football that eliminating tackling would be to rugby or American football. For now, the outright ban on headers is confined to the early stages of youth play in the United States.<br /><br />That includes the girls whom I coach on an under-12 football team in Massachusetts. They are fifth- and sixth-graders — age 10 or 11 — and the youngest among them have never intentionally headed a ball in competition.<br /><br />They are part of the first generation to grow up playing football with such restrictions, which grew in scope last November when the US Soccer Federation announced its own limits, in part to resolve a proposed class-action lawsuit that would have charged the federation and others with negligence in treating and monitoring head injuries.<br /><br />Under the new guidelines, players 10 and younger are prohibited from heading in practices or games. Players from 11 to 13 may head the ball during games but are restricted to a maximum of 30 minutes of heading training per week, with no more than 20 headers per player.<br /><br />No other nation is believed to have made such a move. A spokesman at FIFA, the sport’s world governing body, said this week in an email that “to our knowledge” a ban such as this “applies in the USA only.”<br /><br />But changes could be coming quickly: The BBC has reported that the Scottish Youth Football Association would “urgently” review its guidelines for heading in response to the new study. David Little, the association’s chief executive, told the BBC that it would be “inadvisable” for a child of any age to do repetitive heading drills.<br /><br />George Chiampas, US Soccer’s chief medical officer, said the focus on the younger age groups in the United States was driven in part by concern about the lack of extensive research. <br /><br />The other key element, he said, was that the majority of football concussions occur as a result of aerial challenges, not all of which — head-to-head, elbow-to-head or even head-to-ground — involve contact with the ball. It is not the actual heading that causes many concussions, but the attempt to head the ball.<br /><br />Heading is one of the least instinctive elements of the game. Kicking a ball is natural. Heading, for most, is not, and many young players remain leery of it, no matter how sound the early instruction.<br /><br />They and their parents might be more leery if they read the University of Sterling study published this week in the online medical journal EBioMedicine.<br /><br />In the research, balls were launched at players by a machine in an attempt to mimic the speed and trajectory of a typical corner kick. Twenty-three young adult amateur players headed the ball 20 times over a 10-minute period and were monitored using transcranial magnetic stimulation before practice, immediately after practice and then 24 hours and 48 hours later.<br /><br />The report noted immediately after the heading a disruption of the normal balance of chemicals in the brain and reductions in memory test performance of 41 to 67 percent. <br /><br />“We are showing for the first time quite directly a disruption of biochemistry as a result of heading,” Magdalena Ietswaart, a cognitive neuroscientist and one of the authors of the report, said on Tuesday in a telephone interview.<br /><br /> There is clearly a great deal in need of clarification, and it would come as no shock if the contact sports that have long been main attractions in different parts of the world — from rugby union to Australian rules football — end up with radically new rule books as research and litigation advance.<br /><br /><br /></p>
<p>Football without headers? My team has experienced it for the past two months, and we may not be ahead of the curve for long.<br /><br /></p>.<p>A new study by the University of Stirling in Scotland has found that a single session of heading the ball can significantly affect a player’s brain function and memory for 24 hours.<br /><br /> Tens of millions of people have played, and continue to play, the game without health problems. But as hints of evidence of a link between even small, subconcussive impacts and long-term damage begin to accumulate, it is time to at least consider the possibility that the leaders of the world’s most popular sport eventually could determine that heading is too much of a medical and legal risk to allow.<br /><br />The game, though diminished, surely would carry on. Tactics would be altered, but to eliminate heading would not be the same existential threat to football that eliminating tackling would be to rugby or American football. For now, the outright ban on headers is confined to the early stages of youth play in the United States.<br /><br />That includes the girls whom I coach on an under-12 football team in Massachusetts. They are fifth- and sixth-graders — age 10 or 11 — and the youngest among them have never intentionally headed a ball in competition.<br /><br />They are part of the first generation to grow up playing football with such restrictions, which grew in scope last November when the US Soccer Federation announced its own limits, in part to resolve a proposed class-action lawsuit that would have charged the federation and others with negligence in treating and monitoring head injuries.<br /><br />Under the new guidelines, players 10 and younger are prohibited from heading in practices or games. Players from 11 to 13 may head the ball during games but are restricted to a maximum of 30 minutes of heading training per week, with no more than 20 headers per player.<br /><br />No other nation is believed to have made such a move. A spokesman at FIFA, the sport’s world governing body, said this week in an email that “to our knowledge” a ban such as this “applies in the USA only.”<br /><br />But changes could be coming quickly: The BBC has reported that the Scottish Youth Football Association would “urgently” review its guidelines for heading in response to the new study. David Little, the association’s chief executive, told the BBC that it would be “inadvisable” for a child of any age to do repetitive heading drills.<br /><br />George Chiampas, US Soccer’s chief medical officer, said the focus on the younger age groups in the United States was driven in part by concern about the lack of extensive research. <br /><br />The other key element, he said, was that the majority of football concussions occur as a result of aerial challenges, not all of which — head-to-head, elbow-to-head or even head-to-ground — involve contact with the ball. It is not the actual heading that causes many concussions, but the attempt to head the ball.<br /><br />Heading is one of the least instinctive elements of the game. Kicking a ball is natural. Heading, for most, is not, and many young players remain leery of it, no matter how sound the early instruction.<br /><br />They and their parents might be more leery if they read the University of Sterling study published this week in the online medical journal EBioMedicine.<br /><br />In the research, balls were launched at players by a machine in an attempt to mimic the speed and trajectory of a typical corner kick. Twenty-three young adult amateur players headed the ball 20 times over a 10-minute period and were monitored using transcranial magnetic stimulation before practice, immediately after practice and then 24 hours and 48 hours later.<br /><br />The report noted immediately after the heading a disruption of the normal balance of chemicals in the brain and reductions in memory test performance of 41 to 67 percent. <br /><br />“We are showing for the first time quite directly a disruption of biochemistry as a result of heading,” Magdalena Ietswaart, a cognitive neuroscientist and one of the authors of the report, said on Tuesday in a telephone interview.<br /><br /> There is clearly a great deal in need of clarification, and it would come as no shock if the contact sports that have long been main attractions in different parts of the world — from rugby union to Australian rules football — end up with radically new rule books as research and litigation advance.<br /><br /><br /></p>