Play football, get dementia

Even people who’ve never laced up a pair of boxing gloves realise that taking thousands of blows over a few years may play havoc with a man’s head.

That part of the body isn’t designed to replace a speedbag, and the constant jarring effect of punches leaves many pugilists demented. After all, when a boxer is knocked out or even down, he suffers a concussion. How many concussions can a brain take before its wiring goes awry?

I’d suggest you ask Mohammad Ali, but you can’t. He died nine years ago, having battled Parkinson’s since his late 30s. No wonder: according to experts, Ali took over 20,000 blows in his career, most of them to the head.

A personal note if I may: I took up boxing when I was 15, and the coach thought I was doing well in training. But then I started taking punches to the head and decided I could find a better use for it.

My football career was longer: I was seldom without a ball at my feet whenever I wasn’t at school or playing chess. When I was 12 or so, a friend’s mother told me to quit or at least not to head the ball if I insisted on playing. “You don’t want to end up more idiotic than you are already,” was how she put it with a singular lack of tact.

She was no doctor, and yet I knew she was right: heading those heavy leather balls felt like heading a brick, especially when they were wet. That was a long time ago, and yet the risk of a degenerative brain disorder for footballers was already widely known.

So much more surprising it is these days to read news articles about this or that professional player developing dementia at a relatively young age. Such pieces appear every year or so, and every time the link between football and dementia is presented as a startling discovery.

People who downplay the risk insist that today’s much lighter balls aren’t as damaging. I’d suggest those people retake their school physics course. Yes, today’s balls are much lighter to begin with and they don’t absorb quite so much moisture. But as a result they fly through the air much faster, which makes them as dangerous if not more so.

That’s where physics comes in, telling us that the force of an impact equals mass times speed squared divided by two. That squaring puts a premium on speed, not weight. A 10 per cent increase in speed makes the ball’s impact much stronger even if its weight is down 20 or 30 per cent.

Gary Lineker, a striker turned expert commentator, was certainly aware of the risks when he played, until 1994. He says he never headed the ball unless he felt sure to score.

Defenders don’t have that option, which is why they are five times more likely to develop neurodegenerative disease than someone who never played professionally. In fact, the Federation is currently working with over 200 former players suffering from dementia, and that disease may sometimes be slowed down but never cured.

In 2021 the FA introduced guidance that recommended no more than 10 “high-force” headers in training per week. And, starting from this season, there is a ban on headers in all under-seven to under-nine matches, then to include the under-10 level in 2025-2026, and the under-11s the season after.

Yet Premiership coaches readily admit they don’t keep count in training, and in a decade or so they’ll complain that the new crop of players don’t know how to head the ball. Taking heading out of football isn’t exactly like taking punching out of boxing, but close enough.

Either one takes up those sports seriously or one doesn’t. And if one does, there is a good chance of ending up demented at an early age. So why do so many boys – and increasingly girls – dream of such careers?

The answer is obvious: most of them can’t ever hope to achieve as much, in many cases any, success in any other field. For example, at the beginning of his career Mike Tyson had an IQ of 70 – and that’s before he took those thousands of punches from people trained to throw them. His chances of earning a living as a systems analyst or stock broker weren’t good.

Many footballers are brighter than that, if not necessarily better educated. They could find some jobs, but none that would offer the rewards of professional football. During my whole career in advertising, for example, I met a few people earning £300,000 a year, but none getting as much a week, which is less than some top players make.

Then there is anthropology that says that men are conditioned to take physical risks even when no financial reward beckons. Mountain climbers and sky divers risk their lives (“If at first you don’t succeed, sky diving isn’t for you,” as the saying goes) and, rather than getting paid, they actually pay for the privilege.

The joy of doing such things escapes me. Though no more cowardly than the next man, the idea of risking my life for a trivial cause appals me. Life is a precious gift, of which we aren’t only possessors but also guardians. Higher causes than staying alive exist, but sport isn’t one of them.

“He that loseth his life for my sake will find it,” said the supreme authority on such matters. “For my sake” are the key words, and they mean something other than for the sake of winning a sporting contest.

(In more up-to-date versions of that book, the same phrase reads “Whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.” The medium insults the message.)

Every time I watch a boxing match, I feel glad those chaps are doing it in the ring, not in my street. If they do it with style, rather than indulging in an ugly brawl, I enjoy the show. And I don’t think of cerebral trauma when watching a goal scored with a diving header.

But afterwards, having a drink, I ponder such matters and decide that what I feel for those athletes is closer to pity than to envy. But that’s only me.