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Injury Time Episode 7, Billy Vigar and preventable injuries in sport
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In this episode, we talk about the tragic death of Billy Vigar who died colliding with a concrete wall around a football pitch. We discuss how football seems to be slow to react to player safety, in contrast to other sports.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Injury Time' Podcast
00:00:02
Jonathan Bird
Okay, hello everybody. um This is for, welcome back to another episode of Injury Time, um the podcast where we talk about elite injuries, um routine injuries and how it relates to to the normal normal folk.
00:00:13
Shabaaz Mughal
one
00:00:19
Jonathan Bird
um With me as ever is Ian Beasley and Shabazz Mogul. Hi gents.
00:00:25
Ian
Hello.
00:00:26
Shabaaz Mughal
I'll...
Weekend Reflections and Match Highlights
00:00:27
Jonathan Bird
So we're recording on Sunday 28th of September. How's your How's your weekend been?
00:00:37
Shabaaz Mughal
Long and tiring for me.
00:00:38
Jonathan Bird
Well, exactly. Long and tiring.
00:00:40
Shabaaz Mughal
and
00:00:40
Jonathan Bird
Long and tiring if you spend a lot of your career at Spurs and are from Manchester. That's been long and tiring. um However, not not quite as long and tiring after ian and I were just watching Arsenal come in absolute death, at the death win against Newcastle United.
00:01:02
Jonathan Bird
whole place to the hard place to go, St. James' Park.
00:01:06
Ian
Yeah, great stadium.
00:01:09
Jonathan Bird
Yeah, the um the yeah cathedral on the hill. I was there, actually. My lad is at a uni there, but they were there last weekend. or there on Thursday when Barcelona were town.
00:01:20
Ian
Ah.
00:01:20
Shabaaz Mughal
good game to achieve
00:01:21
Jonathan Bird
Yeah, yeah. it was it it's ah It's a great city. it was It was a great atmosphere as everybody was walking up to the stadium and We were walking back and we just heard this colossal roar um and when Gordon scored in the 90th minute. That sound of the roar from outside the stadium was just just been fantastic.
Injury Impact: Liveramento and Billy Vigar
00:01:41
Jonathan Bird
um We did think that ah the game today, what's his name? Liveramento went down with an injury.
00:01:53
Jonathan Bird
um i know you I know you didn't see the game, Shabazz, but Ian and I thought that maybe he'd done his ACL. it was the It was a kind of jar of his knee as he went down, and it was the sort of immediately just didn't move, holding his knee, and it just it it felt like an ACL.
00:02:09
Jonathan Bird
What do you think, Ian?
00:02:10
Ian
Yeah, I agree.
00:02:11
Shabaaz Mughal
Thank
00:02:12
Ian
was, mean, how the defender didn't get a yellow card, I don't know. Sometimes I wonder about why refs do that. Even Gary Neville thought it should have been a yellow card.
00:02:23
Ian
But yeah, so he's definitely done something to his knee. Unfortunate for him, because I think he's on the edge of, if not in, on the edge of the England squad.
00:02:36
Ian
That's a shame.
00:02:38
Jonathan Bird
Yeah. yeah it's um Yeah, it's not great when you see any player go down with a you know a significant injury. And it looks it looks significant, doesn't it
00:02:48
Ian
Yeah, well, it's unusual to see players get carried off on a stretcher if it's not an important issue.
00:02:58
Jonathan Bird
and And we also this week, very sadly, young Billy Vigar who came through the Arsenal Academy and dropped out around the under-21s sort of age and he was playing for Chichester in non-league, he was playing away at Wyngate and Finchley and Very sadly, as apparently sustained a head injury, now the club have not made the exact details right, but it's been certainly around the press that he apparently,
00:03:33
Jonathan Bird
during play, collided with a wall, concrete wall around the edge of the pitch, um and died two days later on ITU. um Deeply, deeply tragic, and there's already been, I've seen one of the big Arsenal fan accounts have started a a petition to ban concrete walls around the pitch.
Stadium Safety Concerns
00:03:53
Jonathan Bird
um You know, from two guys who have spent a lot of their career sitting on the edge of a football pitch watching players. What what are your thoughts on that?
00:04:04
Jonathan Bird
Yeah, Ian.
00:04:06
Ian
Well, I, it's, we were just talking about it. And there are, there are certainly walls at some Premier League grounds that I was at last year.
00:04:19
Ian
um and Shabazz and I were just talking about advertising holdings, which are obviously very, very important ah because they bring revenue in, but they're pretty bulky things. And certainly the ones that change the message every couple of minutes, they're close on a a foot thick um and very bulky.
00:04:43
Ian
And you know Might as well be a brick wall, really, because they that's how hard they are. And you know if you go to an international tournament, they like the advertising holdings to be more or less surround the pitch because the more footage you've got, the more money you get.
00:05:00
Ian
um But they're definitely a hazard and we we all know that they're a hazard. um Exactly how you manage that and whether this awful incident makes a difference to it, that'd be interesting to see.
00:05:15
Jonathan Bird
Chabaz.
00:05:17
Shabaaz Mughal
Yeah, I think firstly our sincerest condolences to his family, friends, the club and the fans. It's really tragic.
00:05:28
Shabaaz Mughal
I mean, it's horrible, horrible news. And it's something that I remember myself and Ian, we sat on a couple of...
00:05:38
Shabaaz Mughal
like working groups many years ago and it was a topic we brought up and we were quite passionate about because you can, when you sit on the side of the pitch and you watch the game, the way we watch the game, we're not really watching the game as such, we're not following the ball, we're watching almost a split second behind the action.
00:06:00
Shabaaz Mughal
to see what's going on with the players. Was there any contact with that player as he released the ball? That player has just been shoved as he's running for the ball. Is he okay? Has he landed okay? Has he collided?
00:06:11
Shabaaz Mughal
And you can you could sort of see these these incidents and I think there was something brought up as a consequence, again years ago in the Premier League, that there was a minimum distance between the edge of the pitch and the advertising holdings.
00:06:27
Shabaaz Mughal
And I remember we had quite a lot of back and forth about it. And I think it ended up being around two metres. ah but you know I've had lots of players get injured colliding. I remember one player dislocated his finger colliding with the advertising hoardings.
00:06:46
Shabaaz Mughal
We've had players hit the hoardings and injure their ankles. um Even some some places the pitches are sort on a slight elevation and then there's quite a steep drop off and the players, if they get nudged as they're running along, they they twist their ankle there.
Comparative Analysis of Safety in Sports
00:07:05
Shabaaz Mughal
and And Ian will ah you know agree with me here that in Europe you get some stadiums where they have like, they almost have like this huge ditch surrounding the pitch and it's to stop the fans sort of getting in.
00:07:21
Shabaaz Mughal
But, you know, I used to of nightmares that on these away games in the Europa League, even Champions League, know players going end up in that pit and they're going to get shoved and it wasn't that far off the side of the pitch and i remember having like big discussions with the uefa officials who were there at the time and saying look this isn't safe you need so that we'd train in the stadium the night before and you'd get a good lay of the land and you'd sort of identify any issues
00:07:53
Shabaaz Mughal
and you'd ask them this needs to be sorted out for the game tomorrow and you know in most cases they would do something temporarily make sure something's been put up to stop that happening but it's it's horrible there's there's there's massive risk around a football pitch and yeah horrible horrible um
00:08:14
Ian
And the game is very physical. um think when you're watching on the telly, you don't quite realise how physical the game is. And a lot of the balls down the touchline, how physical each challenge is.
00:08:30
Ian
And it's easy to get pushed and shoved or slide two metres. It's not difficult at all.
00:08:38
Shabaaz Mughal
And the speed of the game, that's again another thing. You don't realise how fast the game is. And you know, being on the touchline, you see how it's even faster than you can imagine.
00:08:52
Jonathan Bird
So do we think that maybe football drags its feet a bit with this thing? you know We know that in cricket... as the standard of fielding has has improved um and players will go all out to try and stop a boundary and their momentum will take them beyond the boundary and it really wasn't that long ago that the boundary was physically the edge of the of the of the grass, like where where the where fences were, that was the boundary.
00:09:16
Shabaaz Mughal
Mm-hmm.
00:09:20
Jonathan Bird
um And then you had a advertising hoardings that bring it in a little bit more and then you were getting players colliding with the advertising hoardings. and getting injured. So they just changed the laws and and they brought the boundaries in. they just It wasn't they just it doesn't doesn't appear to have been an issue.
00:09:34
Jonathan Bird
Rugby very much is player safety orientated. um And so, you know, tackles which were endangering players' spear tackles were outlawed.
00:09:47
Jonathan Bird
I just wonder whether you think football is just really is behind the times of trying to be proactive in trying to protect players. What are your thoughts?
00:09:56
Ian
and odd I think it's always relatively difficult to change the laws in football. um I think, so, you know, I was Chief Medical Officer for British English and British Hockey for 10 years, and the rules just for safety changed nearly every year, especially on short corners where, you know, players were hitting the ball as hard as they could and you couldn't see it until it hit the back of the net.
00:10:25
Ian
um But the rules were changed nearly nearly every year to make the game safer for players. and They had no problem with changing the rules. think Football, the real problem is for them is that they don't like changing the rules because it's fine if you say, oh, this the wall's got to be this much.
00:10:44
Ian
Okay, so Manchester United, Arsenal might be able to afford to move the wall and don't care about losing a row of seats because, okay, it impinges a bit on their income but not that much.
00:10:57
Ian
If you're a smaller club, that may not be the case either from the actual having to move it and losing a row of seats and so so they don't like to impose those sorts of restrictions on clubs and organizations that don't have so much money but even if you put padding on the wall at you know it might mitigate you know the force of of hitting it in the wrong way i mean you're right in cricket you know when that player tragically died um of when uh the batter the ball hit him on the back of the head
00:11:04
Jonathan Bird
Thank you.
00:11:32
Ian
they changed the design of the helmet pretty quickly.
00:11:34
Shabaaz Mughal
Thank you.
00:11:35
Ian
So I think there is scope for changing rules, there is scope for looking at it. I just don't think the the way the process of changing rules in football is quick enough and agile enough.
Implementing Safety Standards in Football
00:11:48
Shabaaz Mughal
I think you need minimum standards and I think that needs to be across the board. And it took a while to get minimum standards in to the Premier League. So for that to get down and it should be the case throughout the leagues and the National League and it's there you know it's the responsibility of the governing bodies. You need to have minimum standards. You need to have defibrillators pitch side. You need to have people trained in advanced CPR pitch side, you need to look at the risk assessment, look at the grounds, there's no need to have walls anywhere around the football pitch.
00:12:25
Shabaaz Mughal
They need, you know, these, these should be sort basic standards brought in. and and nowadays, there's so much You know, technology is so advanced that do they really need those big, thick advertising hoardings? Surely there's a way that you could have something that even projects the image on without creating that whole, you know, there's probably a way and it's just why is that?
00:12:51
Shabaaz Mughal
as an afterthought or why does it take a tragedy to have some action why why are those things the sort bottom of the list and other things are more important um yeah yeah
00:13:03
Jonathan Bird
Yeah, as I say, I think maybe it's football is footballers behind the times. know you know as ian You know, with with with ah with Philip Hughes, with he was he was the Australian player who got the the the head injury when he turned to for for a bouncer in a Sheffield Shield match.
00:13:07
Ian
what is behind here. Hmm.
00:13:18
Jonathan Bird
And you know cricket reacted very quickly with that. When Ayrton Senna was killed, they immediately started changing all the circus, didn't they? in in a ninety four and in in in one was before that you know famously formula one they won't move but there it was it was all about they they they weren't that that bothered too much about um driver safety and it was it was people like jackie sure that that pushed it through i mean that's to an extreme But I do think football is slow on the uptake.
00:13:50
Jonathan Bird
I mean, I think it's interesting. We were talking about this the other night about how, so in rugby, they have padding around the posts, but the post is physically part of the game in football. And you couldn't, you can't physically have padding around them. I mean, we remember um ah the Forest player,
00:14:07
Jonathan Bird
um um um who uh who had the ab abdominal injury we think possibly had his lost his spleen i'm not not entirely sure but he had yeah he had to he had to have emergency abdominal surgery the next day um and that was a pretty sort of rare occurrence but i'm almost surprised it doesn't happen more often with with players
00:14:10
Shabaaz Mughal
Last season here.
00:14:27
Ian
Yeah, me too. Sometimes you need a bit of impetus and tragedy gives you wave to ride, if you like, in order to change things.
00:14:43
Ian
The only question that we're all asking really is why does it take that to change things?
00:15:01
Ian
it surprises me. It doesn't happen more often.
Responsibility for Safety Measures
00:15:03
Jonathan Bird
I remember that.
00:15:03
Ian
But when players do, you know, ah i was at a game where there was ah there was a camera in a little pit by the goal. And it was actually Robin Van Persie fell into the pit.
00:15:17
Ian
yeah You know,
00:15:21
Ian
It's just that...
00:15:22
Shabaaz Mughal
And there's no way you'd know what part of his body is injured falling into that pit because you can't see
00:15:27
Ian
No?
00:15:28
Shabaaz Mughal
I think we had a player with that as well. It's like the the everything, for me, it's like they they think of everything else and then the safety things. Oh yeah, the last afterthought.
00:15:41
Shabaaz Mughal
And it's like, okay, it's more important to get the camera, you know, the photographers to have the right view so they can get the right shot. um
00:15:49
Ian
It's...
00:15:50
Shabaaz Mughal
But actually, you know, that's a danger to the players.
00:15:50
Ian
yeah
00:15:54
Ian
it's i mean It's all about marketing and money and it always gets in the way. you know The whole thing about we've to take the wall aisle, we can't do that. Why can't you do that? Well, you know because the spectators and we'll have to get more stewards, this costs more money. they don't like People don't like spending money.
00:16:11
Ian
And unless a disaster happens, you don't really see a return for all that expense.
00:16:18
Shabaaz Mughal
Do you think with football, there's this issue of where does the money come from? it's almost like every league is its own entity, Premier League is its own entity. Then you've got the Football League and then you've got the National League and then you've got the FA. And I don't i even now don't know how who has responsibility, whose remit it is to provide, you know, certain things. and And it makes you wonder, is there just, you know, like, do you really need, is there too many clubs then?
00:16:51
Shabaaz Mughal
If there's not enough money, is there too many clubs that you can't sustain it? And should it be condensed a bit more?
00:16:58
Jonathan Bird
or Or should there be more trickle-down money from the Premier League?
00:17:01
Shabaaz Mughal
Hmm?
00:17:01
Ian
Yeah, that's where it's... There is a lot of money in football, um but but maybe trickle down. um the The FA partly funds the lower leagues, and and it's the FA's job to sort of have a governance structure that football adheres to, including the Premier League.
00:17:23
Ian
The FA do the governance for the Premier League, the Premier League otherwise run the Premier League. But, you know, it's... But these things, you're right, Shabazz, it's a health and safety thing.
00:17:35
Ian
And, you know, it's the the safety of a stadium is passed by the local authority, not not the not the football governing body. So, you know, that's why they always have, you know, when the Spurs stadium was built, that's why they have a have a test game to make sure that the the safety procedures are in place and and working okay.
00:17:45
Shabaaz Mughal
okay
00:17:58
Ian
But it...
00:17:58
Shabaaz Mughal
I remember having loads of discussions while the stadium was being built about this and the pitch runoff and the angle of the pitch runoff and what's going to be at the end of it.
00:18:09
Shabaaz Mughal
And there was a lot of back and forth to get, you know, get to get at least a decent level of distance with that runoff.
00:18:19
Jonathan Bird
you've've You've both been to the San Siro haven't you? That feels to me like a stadium where it's got a concrete wall really quite near to the pitch.
00:18:27
Ian
Yeah, it has. and the And the dugout, you go down to the dugout. You step down into the dugout.
00:18:33
Shabaaz Mughal
Yeah.
00:18:33
Ian
You're standing in a little pit.
00:18:35
Shabaaz Mughal
There's a few like them.
00:18:35
Ian
It's really a dugout.
00:18:38
Jonathan Bird
A proper dugout.
00:18:38
Shabaaz Mughal
Yeah. you know You know, I was at San Siro when I was quite green. It was one of my first seasons. And it was that season where Gattuso started fighting Joe Jordan.
00:18:50
Shabaaz Mughal
It was just crazy. That whole game was crazy. We had a player who got injured and the way that they were taking him off the pitch and it was just an eye-opener is the best way to describe it.
Advertising vs Player Safety Debate
00:19:04
Jonathan Bird
So you so you you were saying earlier you think that maybe some of the some of there some of the stadiums in in Europe are even worse in terms of in terms of the terms of the structures around the edge of the pitch.
00:19:17
Shabaaz Mughal
Yeah, I think that
00:19:17
Jonathan Bird
I mean, would would would not perhaps have it, you know, some of them have got these big
00:19:18
Shabaaz Mughal
ah
00:19:24
Jonathan Bird
athletics tracks around the edge, but then i suppose they just jumble them up with advertising holdings and cameras and stuff like that.
00:19:31
Ian
Yeah, the advertising holdings. are in front, if you like, of the, you know, and I know when I i was at, I think, yeah, it was, it was the World Cup.
00:19:42
Ian
And, you know, one of the one of the places you evacuated a player if they needed to go to hospital was in the corner of the pitch.
00:19:49
Shabaaz Mughal
Hmm. Hmm.
00:19:50
Ian
And the the structure of the appet advertising holdings obliterated the corner of the pitch. And I was saying, well, what's going to happen if something, you know, don't worry, we'll be there, we'll open it for you.
00:20:01
Ian
You know, there wasn't an opening there all the time. and And I think that, you know, because every foot you have of advertising equals income.
00:20:12
Ian
And in the end, it's the income from major tournaments and big games and FA Cup finals that does finance a lot of football in the lower leagues.
00:20:25
Jonathan Bird
Yeah, but remember, um certainly I'm old enough, new are you? i in um the the um
00:20:38
Jonathan Bird
the Bradford Fire at Valley Parade where for many many years they had said that that that that stadium was those where that stand was needed it needed to be um torn down and in fact I think ironically that was that was a last game was the last game of the season um for the younger viewers this was a a game for Bradford's home ground where they think possibly a dropped cigarette with some old bits of paper and one of the stands went up and took two minutes the whole stand was engulfed in flames dozens of people of fans were killed and it was just there was
00:21:18
Ian
And they shut the doors, hadn't they? They shut the gates.
00:21:21
Jonathan Bird
Yeah, yeah so and the way that the human mind works, that when you're in deep stress, you go into an automatic mode, that and automatically when you're leaving somewhere in a football stadium, you go you turn round and go into the into behind into into the gangway between the seats and down underneath the stand and out through the turnstiles, and turnstiles are locked.
00:21:46
Jonathan Bird
Most of the deaths were people who had done that.
00:21:48
Ian
mean
00:21:49
Jonathan Bird
um you know and And in fact, it would have been worse if that was after Hillsborough, that the the there were fences up. If there had been a fence would have been even worse.
00:22:01
Jonathan Bird
um And this then this is the kind of thing, again, with football, it waits until there's a tragedy um before before before they act.
00:22:05
Shabaaz Mughal
Thank you.
00:22:10
Jonathan Bird
But I mean, I suppose, and it's not just football, there are many different sports, different different aspect aspects of life where... um where they're not proactive, but it is a bit shocking to hear you talk about how you've been trying for years to say, well, this isn't right, that isn't right, and you you and things don't really change.
00:22:32
Ian
you know shabazz and are just pedants in this in this world you know all we do is What we do is we we try and we try and do something that's sensible and and safety orientated, but really we're just getting in the way and you know stop it. you know the game's going on that's all there is to it.
00:22:52
Ian
We'll be here to help you out if you
Conclusion and Future Hopes
00:22:54
Ian
need it. And you you hope that's the case and you hope you never have to test it.
00:23:00
Jonathan Bird
Yeah, yeah. OK, look, I think it's just a relatively short pod this week. um Again, you're rest in peace, Billy Vega, it's a real real tragedy. um we were All of us send our condolences to him and his family.
00:23:11
Ian
to
00:23:15
Jonathan Bird
um And, you know, hopefully we will see some real change with the the boundaries around football pitches. um so okay so anyway so um thanks for listening thanks um ian uh thanks shabazz um and we'll see you all next time
00:23:37
Ian
Always a pleasure. Thank you, Jonathan.
00:23:38
Shabaaz Mughal
Thanks, John. Thanks, Ian. Take care.
00:23:41
Ian
Thank you, man.
00:23:41
Shabaaz Mughal
Bye-bye.