By Bridget Sheehan
The FIFA World Cup 2026 is living large on our screens and collective imagination. From lifelong devotees of the sport to occasional viewers, the energy of the event and the Socceroos’ hype has been undeniable.
For westside local Dr Andrew Ross, a physiotherapist, sports injury prevention researcher and safe soccer ‘header’ expert at Victoria University, this sense of excitement and potential to bring people together is ‘why this sport is like no other.’
A soccer fan, he grew up in Scotland where he played the game, and worked as a physio for a professional team in the UK.
He moved to Australia in 2013 and worked in private practice for nine years, where some of the clients were amateur soccer players.
While studying a Master of Public Health he became interested in sports injury prevention. “When somebody comes to see you as a physio, the injuries have already happened, and I started to think about more ‘upstream’ initiatives – what people could do to stop that first injury occurring,” he says.
At the same time, Dr Ross’ daughter was playing soccer at a competitive junior level, and he was seeing inconsistent approaches to potential concussions on the pitch. It aligned with the research he had been reading, particularly the work led by Associate Professor Kerry Peek, who is now leading brain health research at FIFA.
“There was a real lack of understanding when it came to introducing heading into the game. Some kids were doing it, others were scared. Some of the girls were getting concussions and they weren’t really being reported or managed properly. More importantly, they weren’t being prevented,” he said.
Are headers inherently dangerous?
For those of us who are relatively un-initiated with the sport watching the World Cup, seeing the power with which elite players head the ball is both awe and wince-inducing.
However, with strength conditioning and coaching on the correct technique, it is safe, and at the professional level in men’s leagues it isn’t a major injury source; players are more likely to be concussed from elbows to the head in play.
It’s also a key part of the game. “Fans, players and coaches love headers,” Dr Ross explains.
“They’re a way to defend your goal through set pieces, like corners and throw-ins, and a way to score goals – for example in the Men’s FIFA World Cup, roughly 15 per cent of goals scored were from headers.”
Some codes internationally prohibited it in the sport – a move he says is “at best naive and at worst could actually increase the concussion risk.”
Banning it from junior codes and introducing it at an adult level means that juniors can’t practise safe techniques.
And, on the topic of outright bans he says “If you tried to eliminate it from the game, you take that joy away. And, players aren’t silly, they’ll still have to jump up for a duel and then they’ll be using their back and other body parts to defend the ball, which could still end up increasing the risk of concussion.”
At the elite level, he says that the FIFA head injury concussion protocols are excellent.
By contrast, “the understanding of what to do at the junior and community level still has a way to go.”
Researchers have found that heading injuries are more common in women and girls and have suggested a few possible reasons why women may be at higher risk from heading or head impacts. These include physical factors, such as lower neck strength, as well as possible sex-related differences in hormones or brain structure and function. More recently, there has also been interest in whether differences in heading technique may play a role. “For a long time women and girls just haven’t had the same access to resources: to strengthen conditioning resources, to gyms. And it funnels down to exposure, they don’t get the access to heading coaching, they’re not doing as many of these drills with them. All of these factors combined creates this scenario of an increased risk of a concussion.”
Goals for the future
With more women and girls playing the game, he says that there are more benefits than there is risk of injury but “we need to come up with a plan to reduce this risk.” To embed safe heading practices in community sport, he says that resources, continuity and club champions are key.
“In the injury-prevention world, we have to keep working and chipping away and improving.”
To learn safe header techniques for yourself or young soccer players in your life, check out Football Australia resources, and a video tutorial for a step-by-step guide.
