In the pursuit of success in elite sport, the line between right and wrong is often blurred, and opinions divided.
What one person considers an abuse, another might consider merely the cost of making it in a sport at the highest level.
In the case of children, however, should there not always be regulations in place to protect them from those adults who choose to push the boundaries of acceptability to get their young patients playing?
After speaking to Max Noble, the former Fulham academy player who made a series of allegations in an interview with me last week pertaining to his horrific experiences as a teenager at the club, and learning that even at 15 years old he was being administered painkilling injections on troublesome knees, it struck me that pushing young bodies to that extent can surely only lie on the wrong side of that blurred line.
These were not for Champions League finals or Premier League final-day title deciders. Noble was not an adult old enough to decide if they want to take that risk and place their body under that strain for the sake of their sport.
Quite frankly, 15-year-olds don’t know any better. They follow adults, authority figures, doctors. If they are told it’s OK, chances are they’ll agree to it.
Three years later, Noble was left requiring double knee surgery that he believes was caused by all the painkilling injections and painkillers he was told to take, and told that a football club who had promised him the Earth now no longer wanted him.
From the people within football I have spoken to about this since, virtually all of them make two points: that this is simply what takes place in elite academies, and that it is undoubtedly morally questionable.
How young is too young: 18 years old, 17, 16, 15, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10, nine, eight, seven?
It’s a grey area. And grey areas can soon turn into murky, muddy pools. Especially when the reputations of managers, coaches, physiotherapists and doctors are at stake. Especially, perhaps, if those staff working in the academy have ambitions higher up the food chain: with the first team, at bigger clubs, or national teams.
The area becomes muddied because, of course, doctors are perfectly within their rights to administer painkillers to children, with parental consent. Yet when those same rules are applied to an elite sport environment, what then? Just because something is legal, doesn’t necessarily make it right.
Parents may even give consent, yet what parent wants to stand in the way of their son or daughter potentially making it as a professional footballer; to put an obstacle in the way of their child being potentially set up for the rest of their life? What parent would rock that apple cart?
Surely regulation would take parents and their children out of that most awkward of positions. Yet there are no regulations set in place by the Football Association, which instead expects football doctors to uphold the highest standards of medical practice and only provide treatment where appropriate. It is the approach the governing body takes with the England national team, who work with children from at least as young as 14 years old.
But let’s not forget that doctors are people: they can be good, kind-hearted, altruistic, and they can be bad, immoral, self-centred. Surely a layer of regulation would merely act as protection – a buffer – for children who become attached to professional football from a young age. Aren’t young people precisely who the game should be seeking to protect most of all?
Even among senior players, adults who are able to make their own decisions, the issue of painkilling injections has been the subject of some debate. During my own research into the matter, I spoke to several former players, now in their 40s, who had had injections and then required operations to ankles, knees, hips and the rest after retiring.
It was a sacrifice they were prepared to make, and most would make it again.
Even dating as far back as the 1960s, when Scottish footballer Allan McGraw is said to have had 25 injections in his knees during one season and that he did not question at the time why he was taken to a different doctor each time he needed treatment.
Grown men and women making these decisions about their bodies in the pursuit of medals, trophies, glories and fame, is one thing. Should academy players even face the same situation? What teenager would dare question a coach, or manager, or physio or doctor who tells them that having these injections is OK, that everyone else does it? When they are desperately seeking that new contract.
Shouldn’t the pressure and responsibility be relieved from such young minds? Shouldn’t their young bodies be allowed to heal naturally, rather than placed under more strain?
Pain is a way of telling you that something is going wrong. Clearly there is a problem if the response to that in elite football is to trick the mind and body into thinking everything is fine.
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