Player head injuries increasing in football

As the speed of football increases also has the frequency of head injuries. There have been some very serious collisions this year; the worst I saw was a collision with Bolton’s Ivan Campo.

Heading is an integral part of the game, but your head is also an integral part of your body. At the moment the rules do not correctly reflect the speed of the modern game. This is also true in refereeing.

My suggestion is to eliminate extended arms after the player’s feet has left the ground. This would eliminate the elbowing in the air. In addition, I would further protect the goalkeeper by disallowing high kicks in the 6 yard box since I’d rather lose a few spectacular goals than a keeper for the season.

I know that players are paid to take such risks. Just because that is true doesn’t mean we cannot also make the game safer: just look at what has evolved for drivers protected in F1 cars as the speed of that sport increased.