Football's heading ban for kids: Don't let woke brigade destroy our beautiful game

Effectively there is currently a tsunami of ex players from the 60s to the 80s suffering from dementia, almost certainly caused to some degree by the heading on the traditional heavy balls from these decades.

In my opinion, it is a workplace injury and the FA, PFA and the respective clubs have a duty of care to these former players.

Ex-England and West Brom legend Jeff Astle’s family have campaigned tirelessly since the popular striker’s untimely death from dementia at the relatively young age of 59 in 2002.

There has been a lot of to-ing and fro-ing in the past 20 years, but ultimately no real progress in recompense for all of the footballers involved, both dead or alive.

A chilling stat: of the 11 players who won the World Cup for England in 1966, four have died as partly as a result of dementia, Nobby Stiles, Jack Charlton, Martin Peters and Ray Wilson - and one of only three surviving players left, Sir Bobby Charlton is also suffering from dementia.

Sir Geoff Hurst, thankfully still with us, has said he will leave his brain to medical research.

The last thing this worthy cause needs is a red herring, and that’s exactly what the FA’s announcement earlier this week of a trial scheme to ban intentional heading of the ball in football for ages up to under-12s.

It's woke ‘box ticking’ - the balls used in the aforementioned decades and the ones around now are light years apart, and anyone who watches under-12 football and the age groups underneath will state that heading of the ball is extremely rare at these respective age groups.

If we are going to start wrapping kids up in cotton wool, then how harmful are headphones or the white pod contraptions the kids insert into their ears?

How harmful to a child’s eyesight are hours of playing on the various gaming machines?

The bottom line is, they know they’ve got a serious issue at the other end of the game which will hopefully see millions paid out in compensation eventually.

Outlawing heading for the youngsters is a classic case of shutting the stable door decades after the horse has bolted, been sold and eventually eaten in France.

It will go a long way to ultimately destroying the beautiful game that we know, but to the wider public, including the ‘tree hugging/bunny loving minority, it will appea they are doing the right thing?

And that in 2022 is unfortunately par for the course.