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July 22, 2022
Beyond Sport Global Award winners and partner, Coaches Across Continents (CAC), is taking on the issue of heading in football and the risk of brain injuries with a global campaign, “HeadSAFE.” The campaign was developed with Head for Change, a charity pioneering positive change for brain health in sport. Seven years into the effort, CAC is now working with football bodies in the UK to educate on the dangers of heading, and along with partners, is piloting an educational project to promote safe heading throughout the sport.
CAC is a leader in the global sport for social impact movement, working with corporations, governments, foundations and community-based organizations to create legacies based on the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It is a pioneer member of the International Safeguards for Children in Sport and has published papers on Child Protection and Peace and Child Rights. Nick Gates, Founder and Global Strategist of CAC, says that the HeadSAFE effort is an extension of its safety work as heading the ball is the biggest threat to child safety in football.
The English FA banned heading for under 12’s in training and is trialing an in-game ban as researchers at the University of Glasgow found that professional footballers are up to five times more likely to develop dementia or a neurodegenerative disease throughout their lifetime. New guidance from the FA limits the number of headers to 10 ‘high-force’ headers in training per week. And last year, Head for Change hosted the first football match to ban heading at Spennymoor FC.
“When we started working with the PFA (Professional Footballers Association) three years ago, they said that there were only 16 players who had reported Dementia, Alzheimer’s or CTE. In a meeting four weeks ago, I learned that there are now close to 1,000 players who’ve reported a neurodegenerative disease, and that’s a lot to do with the HeadSAFE campaign where now families are able to talk about it for the first time,” said Nick.
Nick started the HeadSAFE journey in 2015 after his father was diagnosed with CTE (Chronic traumatic encephalopathy) after playing professional football for 13 years. CTE is a progressive brain condition that’s thought to be caused by repeated blows to the head and repeated episodes of concussion, which is believed to be highly correlated with heading in football.
Through a combination of educating on the medical implications of heading, coaching on a grassroots level, using virtual reality to replace the number of headers in training sessions and creating safer policies, HeadSAFE is the “only active campaign now that educates all levels of a football organization.
“We’ve been working around the heading issue for close to seven years but over the last three years it’s got bigger and bigger,” Nick shared. It’s a massive global comprehensive campaign and will be the most important thing to happen with football in my lifetime without a doubt. If we don’t get it right, I think football is in danger.”
Through an education focus, the campaign also aims to debunk the myths surrounding heading in football. Some of these include the belief that this issue only affects professional footballers who played in the 60s and 70s, when the ball supposedly weighed more. However, the ball has always weighed the same as per the FA’s guidelines.
“In the next 25 years, it’s going to cost close to a billion pounds in care to look after our former and current professional footballers. This cost of care is if no one else was to get the disease, it’s a billion pounds to fix the current players but it’s only going to increase. It’s a never-ending problem. That’s why we’re involved from a health side of things,” said Nick.
CAC recently became a FIFA Foundation Community Programme-supported organization and ran the first international pilot of the campaign in Stellenbosch, South Africa in partnership training4changeS. With a new curriculum, CAC provided training4changeS with a virtual reality headset that utilizes Rezzil’s Player 22 safe heading software so their participants can learn the technique behind heading the ball without the constant head and brain impact. As part of this pilot, CAC is designing guidelines for safe heading protection in youth programs and is committing to reducing heading in the programming by at least 25%.
Along with making sure all its programs in 130 countries are HeadSAFE trained, CAC is working with the Premier League, the EFL (English Football League), LMA (League Managers Association) and the PFA to find a solution on a professional level. Together they plan to deliver the HeadSAFE programming to the clubs’ Foundation and Academy players – equating to around 135,000 children in the UK – over the next season.
“Just be doing some really interesting changes, we’re protecting the kids who play football and eventually professional players. In England, we’re working with the clubs to make certain that they become models in their communities. This is one of the biggest campaigns that’s ever been in football,” said Nick.
“We want to protect the game and we want to protect the players that play the game with more education, breaking down these myths and bringing on coaches who feel confident to find different ways to educate kids. We all need to work together to keep this amazing game going.”
To find out more about HeadSAFE and how to support, please email CAC Innovate Team Manager, Adam Burgess at [email protected]
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