IT is sad to hear of that yet another of our former sporting heroes is suffering from dementia (“Football world voices support for McNeill after dementia is revealed”, The Herald, February 27). Even those with little or no medical knowledge cannot fail to draw parallels with similar conditions in other sports where blows to the head are commonplace.
Will Smith stars in the excellent movie Concussion, which portrays the struggle between forensic pathologist Dr Bennet Omalu and the United Sates football establishment over the recognition of a link between chronic traumatic encephalopathy found in some former players and the repeated blows to the head common in the offensive and defensive lines in American football. One can only wonder if a similar train of events happened in the past to those footballers who routinely headed the ball as those of us who played football in the 1950s and 60s can testify that heading a wet leather football was at times akin to heading a brick wall. Who knows, low-grade trauma may still be taking place in the current generation?
It also should set alarm bells ringing in rugby circles as with today’s breed of bigger heavier players and the predominance of face-to-face upper-body tackles as it would appear to the casual observer as if head trauma is on the increase.
David J Crawford,
Flat 3/3 131 Shuna Street, Glasgow.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here