A LIFETIME of heading a soccer ball could seriously damage your health.
Sports scientists have found that footballers do worse than swimmers on a range
of mental ability tests. What鈥檚 more, their performance seems to get worse the
more they have headed the ball in their careers鈥攁 finding that could boost
the cases of ex-players seeking compensation for brain damage caused by
鈥渋ndustrial鈥� injuries.
While it is now accepted that the repeated blows to the head that boxers
suffer can cause poor memory, loss of coordination and slurred speech
(快猫短视频, 17 May 1997, p 4),
the idea that footballers can suffer similar
damage from heading the ball is more controversial.
To investigate, Danielle Symons and David Abwender of the University of
Florida in Gainesville recruited 32 footballers and compared them to a group of
swimmers. The footballers performed significantly worse on tasks assessing
reaction times and quick or flexible thinking.
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This might just have been because the soccer players had a lower cognitive
ability to start with. So the researchers related players鈥� performance to a
鈥渉eading exposure index鈥� based on the length and competitive level of their
careers. They found that players who scored highest on this index tended to
score worst in the cognitive tests. 鈥淭he dose-response relationship is a lot
more convincing than a lot of the existing research,鈥� says James Nicoll, a
neuropathologist at the University of Glasgow.
Tom Murray, a solicitor in Glasgow, believes this finding could have
important legal implications. Murray represented Billy McPhail, a player with
Glasgow Celtic in the 1950s who earlier this year claimed unsuccessfully at a
benefits tribunal that he had suffered brain damage from repeatedly heading the
ball. 鈥淚f research like this had been in the public domain at the time of the
case, the decision might not have gone against us,鈥� says Murray.
Providing a conclusive assessment on the dangers posed by heading will
require a long-term study, using footballers and other groups carefully matched
on IQ and educational level, says Symons. However, she warns that over the
course of a career, most footballers will head a ball weighing more than 400
grams and travelling at up to 120 kilometres an hour thousands of times.
鈥淐oaches should be encouraging better techniques,鈥� she says. 鈥淪ome researchers
believe that children shouldn鈥檛 be heading the ball at all.鈥�