The current protocols on how head injuries are dealt with in football appear not only to be open to abuse, but also unfit for the purpose.
When a player sustains a head injury, the game is supposed to be immediately stopped so the player can receive urgent medical attention - and rightly so.
Sport has long been behind the curve in tackling head injuries and dealing with concussions and player welfare should come above everything else.
The problem is, whilst I 100 per cent believe the game should always be stopped immediately when a head injury occurs, I don’t believe play should be stopped immediately just because a player falls to the floor and then opportunistically chooses to grab their head.
Does the Premier League need to change its head injury protocols? Have your say in the comments!
It’s an extremely tough situation to police though. With something as serious as a potential head injury one would always want to err on the side of caution; but equally we can’t have a situation where players could take the rules of the game into their own hands and deliberately manufacture a circumstance where the match is immediately stopped.
The protocols also don’t seem to be addressing player safety as they should be either.
In Liverpool’s game versus Newcastle last week, Newcastle’s Isaac Hayden went down in the 21st minute and claimed to have sustained a head injury.
Although the game wasn’t instantly stopped, within seconds, and as per the Premier Leagues concussion protocol, the Newcastle medial team entered the pitch to make an on-field assessment.
At the same time, the team doctor will have been watching replays of the incident from the tunnel. Both, in conjunction, will then have made a clinical assessment as to whether Hayden should have been substituted or not.
Very quickly they deemed Hayden’s injury to not be serious enough for him to need to leave the field, so he played out the rest of the game.
However, in his post-match interview, Newcastle manager Eddie Howe claimed Hayden was “still dazed for four or five minutes after the game”. The current concussion protocol therefore appears to have failed Hayden spectacularly.
I think I have a solution though. If a player sustains a head injury which justifies a stoppage in play, they should immediately have to be substituted.
This should count as a substitution unless all three substitutes have been used, in which case the player should have to leave the pitch immediately and the team continue a player down - as they would have to with any other serious injury.
This would not only provide a sufficient deterrent for players not to feign a head injury, but it would also allow for the highest standards of player welfare possible; because no matter how minor the injury may appear, the player would leave the pitch immediately and permanently to receive treatment.
Some might suggest that my idea could deter players from receiving crucial treatment that they might need, but that responsibility, which currently lies with the referee, would transfer to the player themselves; which in my view seems safer as it takes out objectivity.
The players will take responsibility for their own health and it will be on the clubs to remind their players that there is more to life than one individual game of football!
