Off Wing Opinion

Is this the future of the "beautiful game"?

Yesterday both Reason's Nick Gillespie and Radley Balko pointed to a reference about a proposed law in Massachusetts that would require children playing Soccer to wear helmets.

While I was aware about a number of studies that had been published in recent years about heading in Soccer and brain injury -- I had never heard of anyone calling for the mandatory use of helmets.

Needless to say, my BS detector went off right away. Could they really mean helmets? As somebody who started playing youth ice hockey in an era where we didn't wear full face shields, it was hard not to laugh.

During the NHL lockout of 2004-05, I spent a lot of time watching Fox Soccer Channel, a period during which I became familiar with a brand of Soccer head gear called Full90. I also knew that a number of Soccer players -- both male and female -- at the highest levels of the sport in the U.S. wore them, including D.C. United's Alecko Eskandarian:

"Before my latest concussion I was one of those guys who vowed not to wear one because it looks silly," Eskandarian said in a telephone interview, referring to the apparatus made by Full90 that gives players protection against head-to-head and head-to-ground collisions. "Now I don't even realize I have it on. It gives me added security. It feels like a headband. If anything, I feel more comfortable to be physical on the field."

Eskandarian has played in three games this season and scored one goal. He will be with United for Saturday's game against the Red Bulls at Giants Stadium.

Eskandarian missed much of last season after a collision with New England goalkeeper Matt Reis. It was the third concussion in his four-year professional career; he also had surgery for a hernia less than three weeks ago. It has been a rough adjustment for a player who was the man of the match in the 2004 M.L.S. championship game, but played only 12 games last season.

"I can't even put into words how tough and frustrating the last 10 months have been," he said. "I had migraines for six months. I couldn't go out or do any physical activity.

I have to hand it to the folks at Full90. Despite the fact that I wouldn't have worn a head guard on the field, at least their product looks pretty slick, unlike those helmets you see above.

In any case, I thought it might be a good idea to do some more digging. I was shocked to find that actual Soccer helmets exist, and that the Massachusetts law that still seems to be working its way through the state legislature didn't just mandate the use of helmets, it actually originally sought to outlaw heading the ball from youth leagues to colleges and universities.

A piece from the Boston Globe from last December lays it all out in pretty good detail. At the behest of a local brain injury activist, Representative Deborah D. Blumer from Framingham introduced House Bill No. 1137 -- " AN ACT To Prohibit the Use of Headers in Soccer Games sponsored by Public and Private Schools and Colleges."

The text is as follows:

SECTION 1. For purposes of this Act, the following words shall have the following meanings, unless a different meaning is required by the context or is specifically prescribed:?

(a) "Soccer Match" any school sanctioned competition organized for recreational purposes

(b) "Header", any use of the head during a soccer match to field, pass, aim or otherwise actively and affirmatively direct the movement of the soccer ball.

(c) "Player", any student in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts engaging in the sport of soccer. Players include, but are not limited to students enrolled in any elementary, secondary, post secondary, college, public or private educational institution in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

SECTION 2. Notwithstanding any general or special law to the contrary, no player participating in a soccer match in any public or private school including elementary, middle and high school, or any public or private college in the Commonwealth, shall use a header during a soccer game. All players shall wear helmets designed to protect against head injuries.

There are moments when the nanny state in America clearly gets out of control. But in this case it totally ran off the rails.

Luckily for Representative Blumer, a last minute re-write removed the language banning headers, but left the requirement for helmets intact. And after looking through this legislative history, we can see that the measure has actually wound its way through the House, while the State Senate is dealing with a companion bill that doesn't include the helmet requirement.

How did we get to this point? The text of the bill credits Robert Edwards, a Framingham resident who suffered a brain injury himself and volunteer with the Massachusetts Brain Injury Association. As it turns out, Edwards tried to convince his local school board in Framingham to approve a two-year moritorium on heading that would have forced school teams to abandon that basic technique at home games while the school board collected evidence supporting his position on headers and brain injury. When he wasn't successful there, Edwards decided to go after bigger game, and get the ban instituted at the state level.

As we've seen, this effort has been the subject of lots of ridicule all over the country, something that helped derail this effort early on. And there's considerable disagreement in the medical community on the issue. The American Academy of Pediatrics said that while wearing eye and head protection might limit the severity of non-lethal injuries, there was insufficient evidence to support a ban on heading the ball, though they called for further study.

The response of the U.S. Soccer Federation, however, was more definitive:

USSF

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 12th, 2006 at 10:02 am by Eric McErlain and is filed under Soccer. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.