Quote Originally Posted by qccfc View Post
A recent study has found that former professional footballers are three and a half times more likely to suffer from dementia and other serious neurological diseases, on that basis you would expect something to be done to safeguard against that.

I dont think we want to see many U12s game where you see long ball encouraged, and of course the U12s age group is the age group you would see players with the worst technique.

Iwan Robert has done a recent podcast and documentary, and he states that he wasn't as good in the air until he started doing additional heading sessions after training, and that repeated impact must have an effect.
They've also discovered that the benefits of playing professional sport means they live on average 9 years longer than the general public.
I wonder if some of this effect is some footballers are living long enough to get some dementia, whereas if they hadn't been a footballer they might have died younger from something else.