FOOTBALL coaches have been encouraged to think twice about how much youngsters head the ball, it has emerged, after a new study prompted widespread debate on the issue.

Barrow and District Junior Football League rolled out new guidance which narrowly stops short of an outright ban following concerns from local clubs in December last year.

The news shows how leaders were working to safeguard youngsters before the publication this week of a University College London study which linked heading balls to long-term brain damage and dementia.

This led to some calls for the Football Association to follow the United States and bars the practice in children under 10, but some players and supporters say such a measure is too drastic.

League secretary Ben Shirley said: “What we have encouraged clubs to do is take a common sense approach to this, we’ve asked coaches to question if it’s necessary for children between the development ages of seven and 11 to practise heading the ball and the unanimous response was ‘no’.

“It was Michael Moorby of Ulverston Rangers who brought this up just before Christmas and we went away and looked at all of the advice and evidence.

“Heading will always be a part of the game and my personal view is that is you cannot eliminate it entirely, but what you can do is safeguard children.

“The issue has been on our agenda and will continue to be on our agenda. I’ve no doubt it will be discussed at length at our AGM about how we can pro-actively protect children playing football in this area.”

Researchers conducted post-mortem examinations of the brains of five professional players, and one amateur, who had played for an average of 26 years.

They found evidence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, which can be caused by repeated blows to the head and is a condition known to lead to dementia, which was found to be 12 per cent higher than average in the footballers.

Players examined had also developed dementia around their mid-60s, an average of 10 years earlier than most people afflicted with the incurable disease.

Veteran coach, Barrow Celtic junior secretary Dennis Boyd, 80, believes more research, led by the FA, needs to be conducted before a decision is made.

Mr Boyd told the Evening Mail: “I have seen people from my era in the early 1950s who were great headers of the ball get Alzheimer’s in later life.

“Of course there’s no evidence to say that it definitely was that, but the balls back then were leather and really, really heavy, especially in the rain.

“Balls these days are lightweight and the FA has reduced sizes according to age groups, so things have been done, but I think it is burying its head in the sand a bit with this issue.”

Cumbria County Council told the Evening Mail schools in south Cumbria have the power to choose to forbid the heading of balls in sports lessons, but the local authority would not issue a ban to schoolchildren unless the government brought in new guidelines or legislation.

A CCC spokesman said: “Any decision would be at the discretion of an individual school, we certainly would not look to bring in some sort of blanket ban.”