Football: Academic calls for limiting headers for young Kiwi footballers

There has been a new call to limit youth heading in New Zealand football.

There has been a new call to limit youth heading in New Zealand football to reduce brain injury dangers.

Concerns around the world have seen restrictions introduced in countries such as England, which recommends footballers do no more than 10 "higher force" headers a week in training.

Now a University of Otago lead researcher says New Zealand football bosses will "soon be tasked with addressing this issue".

In a paper published in Science and Medicine in Football, Alex Gilbert says New Zealand should be prudent in taking action to limit heading exposure despite a lack of definitive data proving the link between headers and brain injury.

"Although heading a ball tends to result in relatively small impacts, it's the sheer number of these impacts incurred over a long period of time during training and gameplay which may have a cumulative effect," he says.

"…what we can say is that young athletes, particularly adolescents, tend to experience concussion symptoms for a longer period of time than adults….the brain may be more vulnerable to injury while in a highly developmental stage."

Gilbert reported that the USA bans headers for all players 10 and under, and limits it to 20 per week for ages 11 to 13.

The United Kingdom has updated its junior guidelines which limit exposure to headers to all levels including professionals.

The Guardian recently reported that all English football club may be asked to significantly adapt training methods. This would restrict higher force headers, those from long passes and corners, to 10 a week in training.

Gilbert wrote: "…it's essential that players, coaches, parents and patrons of the sport understand the rationale for adopting any restrictions."

It was important to follow up by assessing how effective the regulations were. Future research might allow the restrictions to be reversed, he said.