Big Impact Player Injuries

Weirdest thing I can remember anybody being side-lined for was Garry Birtles 1987/88 season after the Blackpool home match...
A few days later Garry Birtles was admitted to hospital with a dangerously high temperature of 104 degrees, 'I woke up in the early hours and my legs had gone numb, my arm was swollen, I could hardly breathe and I had a pain down the left side of my chest. My wife called an ambulance.' The problem was traced to an infection in one of his fingers which was thought to have been caused by scraping it against another player's tooth!

Just goes to show how anything can happen out there in a contact sport.

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Originally Posted by slack_pie

I'm not saying we should take it lightly. Just saying it must be pretty rare given that I can't think of a single instance of a player retiring early due to concussion.

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It will happen in time though SP. Many sports are taking head knocks much more seriously now. They all have their own idiosyncrasies where a head knock can happen. They're pretty obvious in American Football, Rugby, Boxing etc., but football also encourages trauma to the head.

When I did my FA Coaching Certificate in 2001, the person leading the course was the Head Coach ('scuse the pun) for the Forest Junior Team. He said that they had stopped doing heading training with the juniors. He said it actually wasn't a bad thing as the club was heavily promoting playing the game on the ground. By doing this, it included all players, whatever their size. He did have a chuckle though as he said one of his squad was Tom Huddlestone, who was about 6ft tall at the age of 12 and scared the life out of the opposition.

I've adopted this with my coaching in NZ and got 'offside' with many traditional football coaches here. You do need to be able to head a ball to play football, but you don't need to practice it all of the time.

In terms of retiring from football, the only player I know was the Australian Joey Didulica who had loads of concussions from playing football. I think he played in Austria for a while.

Ted Drake knocked unconscious reived him (smelling salts wet rag) sent him back on where he scored three goals.

Health and safety non existent in those days.


https://arsenalarsenal.net/wp-conten...nocked-out.jpg

As I recall, Jatta played on for quite a while (30 minutes?) after his head injury against Grimsby, which suggests there’s something wrong with the concussion protocols. Unless you can develop it afterwards?

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Originally Posted by nw6pie

As I recall, Jatta played on for quite a while (30 minutes?) after his head injury against Grimsby, which suggests there’s something wrong with the concussion protocols. Unless you can develop it afterwards?

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Delayed concussion is not uncommon, I suffered it myself 24 hours after being hit on the head playing cricket.