'Minimise headers': Capital Football await Football Australia's guidance after two more studies point to danger of head injuries in sport

Two years ago soccer associations in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland banned children from 11 years and under from practising the skill at training, and made it a low priority for 11 to 16 year olds, due to studies raising concerns on concussions and brain injuries long term.

Football Australia reacted and said it would review its own policies after the three British associations banned the skill in early 2020.

Two years later and no such policy has been implemented, but Capital Football said it was monitoring the evolving research by FA.

Capital Football's new technical director Phil Booth said if a final policy was not implemented by FA, the guidelines of minimal heading would be encouraged to clubs.

"The board is monitoring the evolving policy benchmarks. Ongoing studies for Football Australia are being conducted on the effects of heading by Dr Kerry Peek and Mark Jones," he said.

"In the absence of a final policy from the FA, the guidelines of minimal heading is encouraged in training sessions with a light weight ball, if heading training needs to take place at all."

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Some clubs in Sydney and NSW have taken it upon themselves and banned heading for children under 12. Others are implementing techniques such as a softer ball or minimising headers at training, alongside neck strength exercises recommended by Dr Peek's research.

Two new studies this month, however, have joined the growing body of evidence pointing to the dangers of head injuries in sport and the need for management.

One sampled the blood of Norwegian premier league soccer players across two seasons and identified potential biomarkers for brain injuries. It found repeated heading and accidental head impacts caused changes to blood patterns in the brain, with some potentially altering the brain's signalling pathways.

Another released data recovered from 21 brains from amateur and professional sportspeople donated to the Australian Sports Brain Bank over the last three years. All donors had participated in sports with risk of repetitive head injury - AFL, soccer, rugby union, boxing, basketball, equestrian sport - and all but one exhibited some form of neurodegeneration.

Twelve of the donor brains had chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) lesions, and half of those had died via suicide. The research found CTE in both older former professionals with long playing careers and younger non-professional athletes who played under modern head injury guidelines.

Tuggeranong United FC president Stan Mitchell said guidance had not been provided to clubs on heading yet, but he hoped Capital Football would implement some sort of policy on it soon.

"It is concerning, we don't know what to do exactly and no one in football land seems to," he said.

"We don't have a policy ... the best we can do is talking to our people. We have an unwritten rule where anyone who is looking worse for wear doesn't go back on, whether that is head injury or a leg injury, and that's something I and other presidents have discussed with our coaches.

"This year our physio is offering to do baseline [head] assessments for our NPL but that only helps first grade and some under 23s, not the under 11s."