Your health as a footballer comes first! By Ahmed Parker Shortly after joining CSM, I learnt of the passing of Yazeed Kasu, a 29 year old footballer from Cape Town, who died after playing a match with his team, Blue Bells FC. Although i do not know the cause of Yazeeds passing and I am in no position to comment on it, but it reminded me of the importance of safety in football so I wanted to share the following with you. If we go back to the 1998 Confederations Cup in France, the African Champions of the time, Cameroon, were in the midst of battle when one of their players, Manchester Citys Marc-Vivien Foe collapsed on the field and died shortly thereafter. It was later discovered that he had a cardiac defect that led to sudden-cardiac arrest and his untimely death. Think about it for a moment, if FIFA (the worlds governing body) and Manchester City (a high profile Premier League club) could not identify this through screening, how are we as amateur and semi-professional footballers in South Africa meant to manage the risk? How many times have you gone to training or played a competitive match for 90 min without notifying your coach that you just recently had the flu? Worse still, how many of us have played competitively for 90 min whilst still on antibiotics or other treatment for illness? Its just one game and agh, ill be alright is what we say, but do you believe that these players knew it would be their last game? My message to you is: if you are ill, rather take a break, your health is way more important than a game of football. One of my Professors, Wayne Derman used to guide us as follows: Think about where your symptoms are: A. If they are above your shoulders (i.e. headache, stuffy nose, or scratchy throat), its okay to train or play, provided the symptoms dont get any worse when you do. If they do get worse go to B. B. If your symptoms are below your shoulders (e.g. sore body, coughing, nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, fever, etc.); stop training or playing immediately as you may be at risk. For every day that the symptoms are present, take at least one to two days AFTER the symptoms have disappeared to recover. In other words if your symptoms are there for two days, take at least another two to four days off after the symptoms have stopped. I understand that this means if youre sick for a week, youd have to take another week off, which means two weeks of no training, which results in a lack of fitness and so on... but like I’ve said before, your life is more important than football. In the context of your career, how much do those two weeks really matter? The same goes for injuries, just because the Doctor or Physio has cleared you to train again, does not mean that you are one hundred percent fit to compete for 90 min, gradually get back into the game and look after your health first. Next week, I will chat about getting yourself fit again following injury, something which one of the CSM members asked me to share with you. Until then, all the best with your football. Regards Parker. #FootballFItnessFridays #CSM #Umbro #Football #Fitness #Health #Wellness #FIFA #SuddenCardiacArrest #SafetyinFootball #Umbro
Posted on: Fri, 15 Aug 2014 08:02:10 +0000
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