crodonilson
He/Him
The obvious and easiest solution is to ban heading. Treat heading as handball, any header is a foul and a free kick to the opposition or a penalty if a header in the penalty area.
The obvious and easiest solution is to ban heading.
better ball technology in football, (combined with heading bans for very young kids in schools and clubs, or better give them balls which are weighted proportionately to a child's weight and don't bounce much),
I'm involved with youth football through my son's team. They use size 3 balls at U7, U8 and U9 level; size 4 at at U10, U11, U12, U13 and U14; and size 5 only comes in at U15 level and above.
At the very youngest levels it is very rare to see a child even attempt a header to be honest.
But think about it in terms of proportions
An adult weights approx 12 stone
A 7 y/o weights 3 stone
So an adult will be about 4 times the weight
A size 5 ball weighs ……. ok well I don’t know, but it’s about … what … 20 to 30% more than a size 3
A size 3 ball for a youngster then is the equivalent of you or I trying to kick or head a medicine ball
This has two impacts
Firstly, and completely irrelevantly to this thread, skilful youngsters struggle to move a ball any distance at all and get completely outperformed by their less skilful but bigger counterparts.
Secondly, whenever they do head it, (and I don’t really agree that they don’t head, the kids try to copy their heroes) it’s doing proportionately more damage
That doesn’t even get into the difference between adults and youngsters in terms of skull thickness, rib cage or neck muscle development at different stages of their childhood.
The point I’m making is that I believe that youngsters should be playing with non bouncy futsal type things or lighter plastic balls until they get to secondary age. Which is exactly what my boy has got.
The obvious and easiest solution is to ban heading. Treat heading as handball, any header is a foul and a free kick to the opposition or a penalty if a header in the penalty area.
(Top) Footballers tend to live longer than non footballers because of their diet, fitness, medical monitoring, wealth, etc
Although footballers had higher risk of death from neurodegenerative disease, they were less likely to die of other common diseases, such as heart disease and some cancers, including lung cancer.
...
"Our data show that while former footballers had higher dementia rates, they had lower rates of death due to other major diseases.
But think about it in terms of proportions
An adult weights approx 12 stone
A 7 y/o weights 3 stone
So an adult will be about 4 times the weight
A size 5 ball weighs ……. ok well I don’t know, but it’s about … what … 20 to 30% more than a size 3
A size 3 ball for a youngster then is the equivalent of you or I trying to kick or head a medicine ball
This has two impacts
Firstly, and completely irrelevantly to this thread, skilful youngsters struggle to move a ball any distance at all and get completely outperformed by their less skilful but bigger counterparts.
Secondly, whenever they do head it, (and I don’t really agree that they don’t head, the kids try to copy their heroes) it’s doing proportionately more damage
That doesn’t even get into the difference between adults and youngsters in terms of skull thickness, rib cage or neck muscle development at different stages of their childhood.
The point I’m making is that I believe that youngsters should be playing with non bouncy futsal type things or lighter plastic balls until they get to secondary age. Which is exactly what my boy has got.
Sorry, but a child heading a size 3 is in no way the equivalent of an adult heading a medicine ball, ludicrous comparison.
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Interesting. Where did you read this?
It might help if we knew what weight medicine ball you are using in your example?
It’s all in the thread and fairly uncomplicated
So an adult weighs about 4 times as much as a 7 y/o (using a 7 y/o as an example as I have one and I know how much he weighs)
A adults ball is much less than 4 times heavy than the ball my son uses in his football class. In fact a size 3 is only about 20% lighter than a size 5
Adults weight to childs weight = 400% difference
Adults ball weight to childs ball weight = 20% difference
All approx figures of course ….
But the point I’m making, is that for a child to header a size 3 ball, which they do all the time, is the equivalent of an adult heading something much, much heavier than an adults football*.
Drew says this is a ridiculous comparison and I’m keen to see how he back this up.
The reason I’m saying this is that we are talking about taking sensible precautions as to how to lessen the risk of footballers getting dementia. I don’t agree that heading should be banned but I think there are ways of discouraging it in aspiring players during the crucial years of brain development
My idea is that children in football clubs and schools should use either lighter plastic balls or futsal type balls, which will hardly bounce up, until a certain age. (Brain scientists would better be able to say which age). This would mean all future Shane Duffys will have 10ish fewer years of 100’s of micro-traumas a day through heading. Hopefully this will reduce dementia in footballers in later life.
This would have the duel, but unrelated benefit of reducing the emphasis of bigger kids winning all the time, as they are the only ones who can kick it any distance, and force kids to work on their ball skills, rather than compete in the air for an endlessly bouncing size 3 leather ball.
*It’s actually even worse due to weaker neck muscles and lower skull thickness as I said in the earlier post.
Flawed logic. You have missed out the effect of the pace the ball is travelling at. An adult is heading a ball kicked towards him by an adult; a 7 year old is heading a ball kicked by a 7 year old. It's the momentum of the ball that they're heading that matters, not its weight.It’s all in the thread and fairly uncomplicated
So an adult weighs about 4 times as much as a 7 y/o (using a 7 y/o as an example as I have one and I know how much he weighs)
A adults ball is much less than 4 times heavy than the ball my son uses in his football class. In fact a size 3 is only about 20% lighter than a size 5
Adults weight to childs weight = 400% difference
Adults ball weight to childs ball weight = 20% difference
All approx figures of course ….
But the point I’m making, is that for a child to header a size 3 ball, which they do all the time, is the equivalent of an adult heading something much, much heavier than an adults football*.
Drew says this is a ridiculous comparison and I’m keen to see how he back this up.
The reason I’m saying this is that we are talking about taking sensible precautions as to how to lessen the risk of footballers getting dementia. I don’t agree that heading should be banned but I think there are ways of discouraging it in aspiring players during the crucial years of brain development
My idea is that children in football clubs and schools should use either lighter plastic balls or futsal type balls, which will hardly bounce up, until a certain age. (Brain scientists would better be able to say which age). This would mean all future Shane Duffys will have 10ish fewer years of 100’s of micro-traumas a day through heading. Hopefully this will reduce dementia in footballers in later life.
This would have the duel, but unrelated benefit of reducing the emphasis of bigger kids winning all the time, as they are the only ones who can kick it any distance, and force kids to work on their ball skills, rather than compete in the air for an endlessly bouncing size 3 leather ball.
*It’s actually even worse due to weaker neck muscles and lower skull thickness as I said in the earlier post.