Championship 24/25

[Tyrone Shoelaces]

17 minutes ago, Mashed Potatoes said:

That's terrible news. I think years ago Gary Lineker used to refuse to practice heading in training for precisely the reasons outlined in your post.

“  We did the exact ( same ) training, heading the ball for hours on end, over and over again. A 90 minute session might be just about heading. I was a striker so my job was obviously to put the ball in the back of the net.

We would do heading practice for hours and hours with the ball fizzing in from the wings. It was just header,header, header, bang, bang, bang.

We’d it in training, sometimes for an hour and a half. When I think about it, I mean I must have headed the ball 10,000 times. I think heading should be limited in training, it has to be limited. We did it for too long, hence the fact I’ve ended up with early onset dementia at 57 “.

It’s obvious to me that constantly headed a pretty heavy football isn’t good for your health. Although you get outliers like Sir Geoff Hurst, who must have headed as many balls as Payton if not more, and is still lucid.

My best mate at the time who went on to have a long and successful career in amateur football as a centre forward and centre half has Parkinson’s. He was a great header of the ball but I suspect he’s paying for it now.

Heading was my weak point. In training and practice I’d always be sending in the crosses and avoiding heading the ball at all times. Maybe that’s why I’ve still got some marbles left.

Edited 5 hours ago by Tyrone Shoelaces

[Commondore]

The balls used today would be noticeably lighter and thinner than the leather balls Payton played with in the 80’s and 90’s.

[simongarnerisgod]

when i played schoolboy football  training on a wednesday night was about how far you could kick it,tackling hard but fair and those horrible crosses into the box that you were supposed to head in ,thankfully being small and a full back i never had to  endure the nightmare,though having the head the ball straight from a goal kick on sunday mornings was torture,always hated heading the ball,even if you got it plumb on the forehead it still had you seeing stars