MP Calls for Legal Limits on Heading in Football Training

A Labour MP wants the government to set legal limits on how often players head the ball in training. Grahame Morris, the MP for Easington, has submitted the call in Parliament after the death of a former Middlesbrough player who died with chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, a degenerative brain disease linked to repeated blows to the head.

The player was Bill Gates. His wife, Judith Gates, is the founder of Head Safe Football, a charity campaigning for safer heading rules. The charity submitted a national petition in September, and Morris's motion backs it.

Parliament has a tool called an Early Day Motion. It is a formal notice that lets MPs put an issue on the record and invite others to sign up to it. It does not change the law on its own, but it shows which concerns have support among MPs.

Morris wants the government to set up a taskforce. It would bring together medical experts, player representatives, campaign groups and football authorities. Its job would be to develop heading safeguards that could be enforced. The motion also asks for a national action plan to protect players' brain health, and for CTE to be recognised as a public health concern.

Morris told BBC Sport that the aim is awareness. He said he wants more people to understand the evidence that repeated head impacts, especially from heading a football, can raise the risk of neurodegenerative disease. That is the umbrella term for conditions that gradually damage brain cells, such as dementia.

Researchers have found that footballers are three and a half times more likely to die from a neurodegenerative disease than the general population. That finding is at the heart of the debate about whether the game's current rules go far enough.

Heading rules already exist, though they differ across the game. The Football Association recommends no more than 10 headers a week in training at amateur level. It has also phased out deliberate heading in grassroots matches for children aged 11 and under. For the professional game in England, clubs have been advised to limit players to 10 high-force headers a week in training.

Scotland goes further in one respect. There, heading is banned in training on the day before and the day after a professional match.

For many fans, the question is simple to ask and hard to answer. Heading is part of the game, and a well-timed header can decide a match. The debate now is how much of that contact is safe, and who should decide. Morris's motion puts that question to the government, and it leaves the answer to a taskforce that does not yet exist.