Protective headgear gets kicked around by
advocates and critics

The 36-year-old Ottawa resident tells the Canada Safety Council’s Living Safety magazine that the Performance Headguard, designed by San Diego-based Full90 Sports Inc., has already helped cushion her cranium from a potentially painful collision with another player.

Some soccer safety advocates insist that the type of headgear Hooper wears could protect soccer players from serious head injuries. Others aren’t so sure, as Ottawa-based journalist Christopher Guly explains in the cover story appearing in the spring issue of Living Safety.

Dr. Scott Delaney, head physician for McGill University’s men’s and women’s soccer teams and who led a 1999 study that looked at concussion among Canadian university football and soccer players, believes that headgear could help prevent concussions. “It may also prevent damage to the brain incurred from repetitive blows to the head over many seasons,” he says.

In addition, headgear could protect players designated as headers, particularly those at the elite level where they are heading the ball up to 10 times per game, explains Delaney, who is helping to draft a position paper on preventing head injuries in soccer for the Ottawa-based Canadian Academy of Sport Medicine.

But Ottawa-based orthopedic surgeon Dr. Rudy Gittens, who serves as chairman of the Canadian Soccer Association’s sport medicine committee and is a member of the sports-medical committee of the Zurich-based Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), insists “there is no scientific evidence available as yet to conclusively state that purposely heading the ball produces concussions.”

Several studies around the world are underway to determine the effects of heading, including one led by Ottawa-based Biokinetics and Associates Ltd., and involving Gittens that is investigating the impact of ball-to-head contact during heading.

The Canada Safety Council is contributing to a study on soccer head injuries among minor league players that is being conducted at Stollery Children’s Hospital in Edmonton.

Meanwhile, Delaney is a member of a committee looking at establishing a soccer headgear standard for Pennsylvania-based ASTM (American Society for Testing and Materials) International.

Still, Gittens, who also heads the medical commission for one of FIFA’s six continental governing bodies, CONCACAF (Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football) says that he is unaware of any scientific studies that support the use of protective headwear in preventing concussions.

He also worries that headgear worn by players like Hooper will create a “false sense of security” in protecting them from head injuries.

For her part, Hooper says the Full90 Sports’ Performance Headguard allows her to feel “a little bit more secure when going to head a ball.”

It also complies with FIFA’s Law 4 handed down prior to last year’s Women’s World Cup, which allows players to wear such non-compulsory equipment as “headgear, facemasks, and knee and arm protectors made of soft, lightweight, padded material.”

The U.S. Soccer Foundation, the National Collegiate Athletic Association and the National Federation of High Schools in the U.S. also now allow the use of protective headgear in the sport.

As for the CSA, Gittens says that it’s expected to “comply with FIFA’s Law 4 concerning players wearing non-compulsory equipment.”

The Canada Safety Council publishes Living Safety on a quarterly basis.

This article is from Living Safety, Spring 2004