Alarm bells are ringing in sport about the risk of a group of chronic, neuro-degenerative diseases, commonly understood as dementia. There is an increasingly large body of evidence which has identified that small, repetitive collisions of the brain inside the skull cause this disease.
More high-profile players from England’s 1966 World Cup-winning squad are getting dementia and heading the football is to blame. It is now time for a blanket ban on heading until the age of 18, and from then on it should be closely monitored and reduced.
It is not just the big collisions that end with players being carried off the pitch or taken to hospital for tests that appear to be causing the problem. It is the small, daily collisions – the ones which happen with routine. Research has found that one particular form of dementia (known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy or CTE) seems to only exist among those who, as part of routine activities, incur these regular assaults to the brain.