It’s been a while since our Beyond The Touchline feature has made an appearance. It has come to my attention, over the past year or so, that player welfare and safety is not as paramount as it once was. So much so, that it has disappointed me somewhat.
This weekend has been a great eye opener on what the FA’s opinion is on player safety. Craig Dawson’s ‘assault’ on club legend, Julian Speroni astonished many and caused blood to boil in the bodies of many a Palace fan, myself included. Even though the decision wasn’t given, it made me think. And judge. And assume.
This assumption is one of grave concern. A worry of player safety. More specifically, match officials and a lack of basic medical knowledge. Football, being a contact sport, causes injuries. It’s a given, especially in the modern game. One of the main types of injuries contact sports cause are head injuries, such as those suffered by Julian Speroni. It is fairly common to see contact such as a clash of heads or maybe a trailing elbow, but the type of injury Speroni suffered is a dangerous one. One that could have caused a concussion. This led to me research about FA guidelines on head injuries.
If there is any suspicion of the player having sustained a concussion, the player must be removed from the field of play, and not allowed to return.
A quote from ‘Head Injuries in Professional Football’ by The FA
Could I ask who is meant to police this guideline? The match officials? The managers? The medical team? On Saturday, the policing was done by Neil Warnock, much to Julian Speroni’s dismay. This annoyed me. Not because he came off the pitch, but how little concern was shown by elected referee, Mark Clattenburg. He didn’t care about the player down, and didn’t even check how the injured player was. How is this man meant to provide a form of protection to the players we watch, week in, week out? If the match officials do not know some basic injury information, we cannot expect them to protect our players. Plain and simple.
In other sports, such as rugby, the referee training contains a medical information pack (in my experience with the IRFU). This has simplistic rules to follow in case of injury, as set by the IRB (International Rugby Board). One rule is engineered for head injuries. A straightforward rule of ‘If in doubt, sit them out‘. The referees police this rule to the book, for the protection of players and officials. Something like this should be implemented in football.
To provide protection in football for players, FIFA should provide some simplistic information on common injuries, and how to referee the situation. Only then, will we have a progression on player safety, which should be paramount to the sport. Will it happen? Probably not, with Monsieur Blatter in charge. The longer it goes on, the more danger they are putting players in.
