http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/a...tml?ITO=1490&ns_mchannel=rss&ns_campaign=1490 So, heading the ball should now be a IDFK for playing in a dangerous manner (to themselves)? Interesting where this topic is going to go in the long run. Maybe one day, there will no longer be headers in the game.
Some high school players I officiated this past season had this headgear with a relatively thick pad on the front/top of the forehead. Having heard of other studies that showed neurons losing their integrity as a result of repeated heading, I assumed that's what the headgear was designed to protect against.
One day we'll probably see that as a required part of a players equipment. Sort of like the evolution in hockey masks.
The last article I saw about the headgear suggested that the headgear may not actually provide meaningful protection.
Actually that makes sense, because it isn't the impact of your head to the ball, it's an internal "brain sloshing" that's the problem. I don't really know how you would prevent that.
The study I read about the headgear is it actually provided some protect but was offset by the fact that the players acted more recklessly with it on. Sort of like doing reckless things on a bike because you are wearing a helmet and pads.
Yeah, I can see that. I would think that in theory, the headgear could help a lot, because the pad at the front would be absorbing energy that the bones of your head otherwise would, meaning that by the time energy reached your head, there'd be less of it to send your brain bouncing around with. But if players go nuts with them on, it doesn't solve anything.
The only thing to solve this, is to teach the kids at an early age to keep the ball on the ground and in control. If they use their head sparingly, it'll most likely keep them from being stupid.
The studies are paid for by the companies that make the head gear. Those helmets are not suspension helmets. There is nothing in them that can keep the players head away from the ball. There is a legal notice like in all American football helmets that wearing them will not protect you from injury. Want to keep from getting concussions learn how to head the right way. Learn how to protect your space you are playing in. Most concussions are head to forearm or head to elbow or even head to head and not head to ball if the ball is inflated right. If you think you don't need to know how to head the right way or how to protect the space your heading in then you will be injured sooner or latter. Or you will just never seem to get your head on any ball. You don't need to put your head on every ball. A redirectional header or a glancing header is not a problem. Get your body on the ball is fine as well. In the wall you can protect your face using your forearm like bela lagosi looked in dracular. Know where the ball is don't see it then surprise it hits you in the face. In HS soccer girls are given the okay not to head the ball by some coaches because of parent pressure. Then the same coaches move to college and are not interested in girls who can't head the ball.
Physics and Physiology trump marketing, and opinion. The headgear on the market simply does nothing to stop the brain from impacting the inside of the skull. When you stop and think about it, it seems like common sense. A longer filter on a cigarette does not stop you from lung damage for example. The headgear does keep little Jimmy/Jane from having a raspberry on their forehead to not remind mom and dad on the ride home they might have done some damage inside. There were some studies mentioned last year, but I can't find it quickly. And this is over my pay grade anyway.
Any sort of padding will help reduce brain injuries. It's the same principle as with a motorcycle helmet, or crumple zones in an automobile. The more energy you can bleed off by the time the force of impact reaches the skull, the better the result. Any energy used to compress the foam is energy that's not transferred into the skull. A flying soccer ball doesn't contain all that much energy to begin with, so even a slight reduction of absolute impact force can make a big difference in relative terms when you're talking about final impact to the skull. The only kind of protection that wouldn't reduce impact force at all is a rigid material with no padding (although this material will help to spread out the impact, which is also beneficial).
Yea, not going to get into an argument here. Our org brought in a doctor/surgeon to discuss concussions and the signs to watch out for. Their study and experiences with patients led to the statements I shared above. They don't care a wit about what happens outside and to the skull. All they care about is the brain impacting the inside of the skull, and worse, it's return/rebound back onto the cerebellum (bad stuff happens here). Hmm, not sure what to do with that. I'm sure there have been several recent and not recent studies of soccer players (including postmortem brain study) showing massive brain traumas. So... this issue is real and widely accepted. Didn't UEFA, FIFA, or the FA just do a study last year? Not a doc, doc told me the head gear is useless re: brain trauma, and lead players to play when they shouldn't yet, and in a more dangerous manner, and don't stop the brain from smacking the inside of the skull. I'll poke around and dig up the study he referenced. Again, I'm not a doc, but I did stay ay a Holiday Inn last night.
I think you misunderstood my point. I'm not saying that there's not enough energy in a headed soccer ball to cause brain injury, just that there's not as much as in, say, a head-to-head collision or even a motorcycle crash. So headgear that would reduce impact by only a slight amount would be essentially useless in a higher-energy impact (because it might only reduce total force to the head by a tiny fraction of a percent) could potentially prove effective in a low-energy impact where it might reduce the impact force by a more substantial fraction. It all depends on the design of the headgear. A bicycle helmet, for example, would prove very effective at reducing brain trauma, because it both absorbs energy from the impact and spreads out the force of the impact across the skull (although due to the design of the impact foam in bike helmets, they would become less effective with each use). There may also be other factors, such as the way the ball deforms, that renders the current design of headgear less effective than it might otherwise be. It also is possible that even if the headgear is effective, it leads to players taking greater risks and thus has the perverse effect of increasing injuries (this is quite possibly the case with football pads, when you compare injuries in football with those of, say, rugby). Under ideal circumstances, however, nearly any sort of headgear will reduce impact force to some extent. In the real world, of course, things may well be different for a variety of reasons, but there's no “common sense” reason why headgear shouldn't provide some degree of protection.
I've heard statements that heading the ball too many times can lead to memory loss, but i have my doubts. I've heard statements that heading the ball too many times can lead to memory loss, but i have my doubts.
I'm not a doc either, but as I understand the physics, the value of padding outside the head is the way it impacts the time over which the shock is distributed to head, which affects the severity of the "sloshing" inside the skull. So the padding has the potential, instead of the brain absorbing all of the force in 1/10 of a second, it spreads it out over 2/10 of a second so that the slosh factor is reduced. (And those numbers are completely made up, but the general concept.) It's really the same reason that in a balloon or egg throwing contest you move your hands with the motion of the egg/balloon -- it spreads the time of contact to distribute the force over time. All that said, I haven't seen anything that suggests that these actually work in a meaningful way in the context of soccer.
Since this is a referee forum, here's the PSA: Please help protect the players in your games by NEVER allowing an over-inflated ball to be used! The following info is what I can relay from a conversation with someone who does research in this area. I have at best a limited understanding myself, so please take it for what it's worth: 1. Taking some air out of the ball offers a large reduction in the force exerted. My inference was that this is because the impact is spread out over a wider area. 2. The force of heading a soccer ball from a long goal kick can reach 100 Gs, which is comparable to a massive football hit. This surprised me. 3. In order for padding to be effective, it needs to be produced from a very specialized material, which is currently very expensive and not widely available. The stuff that's on the market is ineffective because it isn't able to absorb much energy in an extremely short distance.
This is a fun discussion. Lets start insulting each other and conform to the rest of the interwebs ... I kid, I kid! I offer the following assertion: The human head is not designed to be used as a tool to bang things. So WHY do we design a sport that has this happen multiple times per game? Fine, lets reduce the 100G goalkick impact to 90G with headgear. The human head is designed for something like 0G? Let's throw motorcycle, and bicycle helmets out of this discussion. Why, because they are meant to be used in anger ONCE (or hopefully less!). Hockey, Lacross more often, but they are not designed/intended to be used in anger by design. That leaves football, boxing, and soccer headgear. In all three cases, even though there is SOME level of protection, head collisions are part of the sport (head-to-ball, fist-to-head, helmet-to-ground) and occur multiple times per game/match. In all three sports, concussive injuries, and brain damage from repeated collisions are in the news. I'm rambling now. Intentional head collisions bad, 100G, 90G, 80G, any G. So why is it part of the game.
In my experience, most people underestimate the amount of air needed for a ball to be correctly inflated. But on to my real reason for posting: I've heard statements that heading the ball too many times can lead to memory loss, but i have my doubts.
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the potential for memory loss from heading the ball too many times.