Caley Thistle manager Robertson fears for his future over dementia links
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Inverness Caledonian Thistle manager John Robertson has added his voice to fears regarding the link between football and dementia.
Research from Glasgow University, published last month, showed that former players are three times more likely to die from dementia than the general population of the same age.
It was also shown that the risk of Alzheimer's increased five-fold, the risk of motor neurone disease increased four-fold and the risk of Parkinson's increased two-fold.
Experts had been concerned about a link between heading footballs and brain injuries, but Robertson, 55, believes the general treatment of head injuries and concussions gives cause for concern.
"I was knocked out six or seven times in my career and was playing the following week," Robertson recalled.
"You worry if that's going to have an effect, whilst the balls weren't as heavy as they were in the 30s, 40s and 50s, they were still very heavy in the 70s and 80s.
"It's more the concussion aspects of it that I worry about, because personally I actually played on in games that looking back on, I was probably concussed in.
"I certainly came off in games totally concussed and then played in games the next mid-week or the following Saturday.
"I can't speak for other players, but from my own perspective, I'm a bit scared at what lies ahead."
Robertson would like to see the Scottish Football Association or the Professional Footballers' Association Scotland take an active role going forward.
He drew parallels with the National Football League in America, who have donated hundreds of millions of dollars to medical and neuroscientific research, with a 2017 study finding that out of 111 deceased NFL players all but one showed signs of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative brain disease.
The Caley Thistle manager knows that those resources are not likely to be available in Scotland, but he would appreciate some clarity from Scottish football's governing bodies nonetheless.
"I would hope the Professional Footballers' Association or the Scottish Football Association would have a look at that and come up with some kind of testing," he said.
"Even if they can't afford it, just to say they feel you should go and see your GP, at least we would know.
"In American Football the national body got experts in to check the players out. It would be nice if the Football Association did that, but failing that even if they just said we should get checked then at least we would know where we are.
"I think we're waiting to see where it's going to go, because it is a very serious issue."
Yesterday the Scottish Youth Football Association recommended banning heading the ball in training and matches as far as possible for under-11s.
Robertson agrees with the sentiment, but from his own experience of coaching in the Hearts academy he believes it is a rare occurrence anyway.
"It's something we have to look at across all levels," Robertson reasoned.
"To be fair to most of the academies these days, we don't do heading drills. It's all about passing the ball, moving it about, it's not really until you get to about 15 or 16 years old that the ball comes off the deck because the kids physically can't get it off the deck.
"I'm fully behind the move, but we seriously have to look and put more money into research on dementia."
