A SURPRISE announcement, certainly to me and I think a lot of professional members this week, was that a decision had been made to restrict heading in training sessions.

The reason this has been brought in is to limit risk because of the number of older, ex-players, who have sadly suffered with what the medical people have established as brain damage after their careers have finished.

I and others of my generation who were in the game, could fully understand looking back at the fact that in the old days the ball was made of leather.

It had a bladder inside and that meant on the outer surface there was a two-inch long set of laces, which stuck up and obviously this would hurt even more when that part of the ball was headed.

I could never disagree with the decisions made regarding heading.

I know for a fact that I can count at least half a dozen of my ex-players, from the lower-division clubs I managed, even up to Southampton. The ones I know about have spent their recent years in care homes and it has affected their whole families.

The surprising thing which I think must be taken into account is the ball is completely different now, much lighter.

But obviously some of the crosses and shots where people put their head in the way will still have the same effect.

The other thing which of course needs to be monitored is the clash of heads, which happens very often when the centre-half or centre forward were both going for the same ball at the same time.

Fair enough, the authorities are trying to limit the amount of heading – but how the coaches and managers can stick to the new rules, I think will be very difficult, certainly to start with.

Coaching sessions used to always be handled by the manager or coach in charge, but players used to go out beforehand and staying out afterwards was not supervised.

I suppose now, somebody on the staff has got to keep a record of the number of times somebody heads the ball in sessions.

The new directive will be to limit ‘high force’ headers to 10 per training week. Not only has the number got to be accounted for, but the force of the ball as well.

I honestly think it will be very difficult. It will be very interesting to hear how the clubs have been able to cope with this new rule. If during a training game someone heads the ball more than 10 times, what happens then? Is it a free-kick or a penalty?

If I was to be able to talk to some of our old centre-halves, for instance. They would say that 10 ‘high force’ headers were a lot less than they had done in the warm-up, even before a game.

Certainly in training, they wanted some of the other players to stay out and keep crossing the ball – even without any opposition, so they could work on their headers.

It was the same with the centre-forwards who relied on good headers from free-kicks and corners to hit the back of the net.

There would literally be, in my opinion, 100 headers in a week, if you add 90 minutes in a game to all the training sessions leading up to it.

At the moment of course, the good thing for the players and staff at Saints is that they are back in training and have gone away.

Pre-season away from your own area was always good, as the lads had usually not seen each other for the summer time and they would be swapping stories about where they had been and what they’d done.

The staff, of course, were exactly the same and I’m sure Ralph and his staff will be enjoying their trip to Wales, especially having beaten Cardiff in the first game 4-0.

Results in pre-season are not always that important. It’s the getting together, getting the team spirit going again and for the manager and his staff to decide which is the best XI to kick off the new season with.

Finally, thank you to whoever it was who let the media department at Saints know I had a birthday. It turned out over 700 people sent their well wishes on social media.

Thank you very much to everyone for that. Onwards and upwards and here’s to many more!