Heading for a change

Footballers are five times more likely to suffer from dementia than the general population. Because they head the ball. This revealed by a Glasgow University study. Already, the English football authorities have issued guidance for mens' and womens' professional and amateur clubs that recommends "a maximum of ten higher force headers are carried out in any training week." [thefa.com] High force headers are "typically headers following a long pass (more than 35m) or from crosses, corners and free kicks."

This represents a huge challenge for the sport of football. The present stance of the authorities can be summarised in one word: prevarication. Tony Cascarino was a striker who played for Ireland in two World Cups. Writing in the Times, Cascarino is scathing about the guidance:

The new guidance on heading in training, issued by the leading bodies in English football, makes no sense. The thinking appears to be that doing less heading in training means fewer impacts and therefore less risk.

First, if there is an issue with heading, why allow it to continue at all? Second, heading is a skill and it requires practice and plenty of repetition. Reducing how much a player can practise reduces their technical ability and means they might suffer more damage because they head the ball poorly in matches.

The issue is damage to the brain which is a sponge in the skeleton that takes impact regularly.

I'm not a medical expert but the evidence of this and other studies appears irrefutable. There is only one question to be answered: is heading so fundamental to football that we are prepared to see footballers suffer brain damage? The answer surely is: no. I frequently get carried away when watching football and my frustration at a team's inability to create scoring opportunities; I will shout something like "get the ball in the box for him to head it". You can hear fans at matches encouraging their teams to do the same, so we definitely need educating.

If you watch teams such as Barcelona and Manchester City playing the beautiful game, they do so without the traditional big, brawny strikers who can score headed goals. Last season's Champions League winners and Premier League winners did so without such players. I remember the late Brian Clough, winner of two European Cups with unfashionable Nottingham Forest, saying "If God had wanted us to play football in the clouds, he'd have put grass up there". The clue is in the name: football is meant to be played with the feet. I remember a sickening heading collision last season between players of Arsenal and Wolverhampton Wanderers and that made me think seriously about my attitude towards this issue for the first time.

UEFA - the governing body for European football - has guidance for young people playing football. It includes recommendations and advice on specific aspects such as ball size and pressure, the need for neck-strengthening exercises, and detection of potential concussion symptoms. FIFA - the world governing body - is, as far as I can discover, silent on the issue.

I believe that it is inevitable that, within ten to twenty years, heading will be banned in the laws of the game, exactly as handling the ball is. The authorities would do well to take the kind of initiatives used by climate change activists, by setting a fixed end date to achieve the change and establishing realistic waypoints. Something like the following:

• by 2040, the laws of football will be amended to ban heading the ball, punishable in the same way as handling the ball already is
• by 2035, headed 'goals' will not count as goals scored
• by 2030, free kicks and corners in a football match must be played along the ground
• by 2025, all football goal-scoring statistics and honours (such as 'Golden Boots') will exclude headed goals
• by 2023 the laws of the game will include a definition of 'head' in the laws, as there are currently of hands and arms

1966 World Cup hero Nobby Stiles died last year after suffering from dementia. His son John, a former footballer himself, is campaigning with the Head for Change charity who helped organise a match at Spennymoor Town a week ago, in which heading was banned. A noble cause and well intended, but high level influence is needed to effect change.

There will be those that believe that this will destroy football as we know it - which it will and, in my opinion, for the better - and others who believe such a timetable is too long. The debate should be started and it should not be left to charities to do so.

National Grandparents Day

The problem with blogging about annual events such as National Grandparents Day is: how do you avoid repetition?

This year it's today, October 3rd. Last year was October 4th. We are getting younger. Or perhaps ageing more slowly. I believe it's always on the first Sunday in October. The same as the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe, the premier European horse race, the peak of the flat racing season. At Longchamp today. 3:05 BST.

Anyway, here's what my grandkids can do for me today:

• read your grandfather's blog
• comment on some posts in your grandfather's blog (you have a choice of 303)
• check out your grandfather's Twitter feed @usedtobecroque1 and send me a tweet
• post links to your grandfather's blog on your TikTok accounts
• wear a @usedtobecroque1 T shirt
• make a "I love my Grandpa" web site
• take your mum and dad breakfast in bed

Not much to ask really; I'm always asking my grandchildren for birthday and Christmas lists so I thought I'd preempt their requests for today. Just in case.

October 3rd is also National Boyfriend Day in the USA. I don't have one of those - unless I take Tony as a boy and a friend - so I'll stick with checking my blog for grandson comments. Expect there will probably be none.😭

Butchers and referees

Everything is now viewed through a 'shortage' lens. Today's Times reports that "Britain is facing a shortage of butchers amid warnings that pigs in blankets, hams and party foods will be scarce this Christmas". And in the sports pages, "it has become a weekly scramble to find [referees] to take charge of matches, largely around London". "If he knows the rules and has a whistle, we'll take him" said someone from the Amateur Football Alliance. If only I didn't live 300 miles away ...

The solution is obvious: find some areas of surplus, too many people doing things that are at best useless at worst unnecessary. Start with the House of Lords. Here's your challenge for today, dear reader: locate your nearest member of that esteemed body, give him a lorry, her a cleaver and a dead cow, it a whistle [we're gender-inclusive here] and they can drive to the slaughterhouse, chop up the cow, deliver the meat to the butcher's shop, pick up and deliver some dirty diesel to the petrol station forecourts every Monday through Friday then, on Saturdays, referee Local United v Nearby Wanderers. Sundays, go and collect their attendance allowance at the House of Lords. There are 788 of them, for heaven's sake!  Make them useful.

No doubt my erudite readers will have suggestions for other surplus professions; let's hear them!

My guess is the government will be storing up all these apparent problems for a month and then, at the UN Climate Change Conference Cop26 in Glasgow, announcing "great strides by the United Kingdom towards achieving our carbon neutral goals by:

• reducing the number of lorries on our roads
• reducing the number of petrol and diesel cars on our roads
• reducing the numbers of cows and pigs eaten by our people
• nominating the 25th of December as "vegetarian Christmas Day"
• improving the health of our nation with a pilot scheme in which 788 extremely old people [of all genders] 'volunteered' to take part in a trial of the new 'Saturday running about and blowing a whistle' scheme"

What a dramatic announcement this would be! The whole world will be applauding ... until they realise that, if you don't eat the cows and pigs, they'll all be carrying on doing what they do, which is producing tons and tons of methane. "It has been estimated that methane gas from cows is 23x more damaging to our climate than the carbon dioxide produced by cars": check out cows v cars at ourfuture.energy.

Start stockpiling those pigs and blankets, people.

News from the Front

Supplies report for St Austell on 29th September 2021

Petrol and diesel: ✅

The new Guinness Zero large advertising placard (Tesco) : ✅

Actual bottles/cans of Guinness Zero: ❌

CO_2: ✅ (based on a rum and raisin ice cream eaten in the cause of research)

Wind: ❌

Why wind? Apparently the immediate cause of the UK's current energy problems is a lack of wind. A few calm days and the UK has to fire up dirty coal power stations. In Monday's Times, respected (by me) columnist Edward Lucas wrote that "our current system depends too much on gas (vulnerable to supply shocks) and wind (vulnerable to the weather). This will get worse as we decommission our remaining coal and nuclear power plants." He goes on to propose investment in small nuclear reactors but surely we can find a way to generate more wind.

If the whole population of the UK were to be tasked to undertake a synchronized 'blow' - all of us blowing hard in the direction of the nearest wind farm - every day at 11:00 (just like people used to do to 'clap for the NHS') I'm pretty certain we could generate enough to power the country for the next 24 hours. With me? 1-2-3 blooooooooooooooooooow:

Imelda Marcos

When I played croquet, I used a mallet with a square brass head. As you can see

I use an asymmetric stance with a narrow gap between my feet, through which the mallet swings as I set up the rhythm for my stroke. Sometimes, if my swing is not smooth, the edge of the brass head clips my ankle bone. Which is extremely painful. So I bought a pair of high sided trainers to give protection.

I have a favourite pair of shoes. The most comfortable I have ever had. Leather soles and uppers. Had them for years. The only problem is that they leak in the rain. In those conditions I revert to a pair of suede shoes which are relatively comfortable but, with very hard, wide soles, are not good when driving.

I have another pair of suede shoes. Not only are these extremely smart but they are blue.

 

Because they have long, pointy toes they are very unsuitable for driving. They might get used once a year on average. So why did I buy them? It was a whim; I went into Clark's looking for something comfortable and everyday and came out with the opposite.

What else? Well sandals obviously, for those few days each year when I can wear shorts. I hate sandals and get mocked by some (unnamed) people for wearing socks with them. So I have to buy those horrid "no show" jogging socks. Having said that, it may be that wearing normal socks with sandals may no longer be a 'fashion faux pas' as Mr Wiki claims. glamour.com (obviously bookmarked by cool grandads) tells me that lockdown/quarantine has brought it back into trendy fashion. You wait long enough and your grandad's attire will be voguish, kids!

Also a regular pair of trainers. I like these but they suffer from the disadvantage of taking a considerable time to tie/untie the laces. Particularly time-consuming and awkward when you go into someone's house.

So that's me: six pairs. Not an excessive number, I'd say. Unlike Imelda Marcos who, in 1986 when her husband the Philippine President was ousted in a revolution, was found to have 3,000 pairs. Wikipedia reports that "She and her husband Ferdinand hold the Guinness World Record for the Greatest Robbery of a Government". But not for the most pairs of shoes; that record goes to one Darlene Flynn, an American with16,400 pairs.

I have some way to go to catch up.

See Oh Two

I have an A level in Chemistry, so I know all about carbon dioxide. Including the fact that, when dining in Charlestown recently, there were no desserts as "we can't make ice because we have no CO₂". Apparently we (the country; maybe the world) are suffering from a severe lack of carbon dioxide. This is definitely news to the climate, which is suffering because we have too much of it.

CO₂ is used in nuclear power stations, fizzy drinks, growing plants in greenhouses, stunning animals before slaughter, packaging food (extending shelf life by preventing bacteria), winemaking, as a refrigerant and for removing caffeine from coffee.

It's most commonly made as a by product of fertilizer manufacture and the UK government has given CF Fertilizers millions of pounds to restart its production, which had ceased because of the rise in wholesale gas prices.

According to the Brewers Association, "carbon dioxide quality is essential to finished beer quality, contributing to sensory outcomes, beer foam, mouthfeel, and shelf stability."

So please get this sorted - I need my beer, decaf coffee, ice cream and other sensory outcomes.