Tackle football is a form of football in which aggressive physical contact is used to disarm the player holding the ball. The players wrestle to get the ball, which, in the past years, has caused injuries among young players. This has led to debates revolving around whether or not tackle football should be allowed as a sport for children aged 14 or under. His debate has been supported by contrasting arguments. The aggressive tackling in football, however, seems to be a sport which should be banned for children under 14 because it can cause head injuries that may or may not turn out to be permanent; children can develop permanent aggression and lastly, tackle football can create a negative understanding of the term competition amongst children of such a young age.
In the past, tackle football has caused a lot of head injuries among young children. Among younger children, head injuries can be caused more easily because their heads are fully developed while their bodies are still underdeveloped, which causes their brains to be easily hurt. According to Boston University’s Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy Center Research, “incurring repeated head impacts through tackle football before the age of 12 can lead to a greater risk for short- and long-term neurological consequences”. Such impacts can cause concussions, which can lead to the stated resulting memory loss.
The aggressive tackling of the ball and the ground wrestling preceding the dispossession of the ball is not an activity that many parents would want their children to learn. At a young age, children are still going through a learning process where their values are developing, and aggression is not what should be instilled in them. Although a sport is thought to have the opposite impact, it is highly likely that given the circumstances where children cannot play tackle, their energies will be directed into aggression. In order to release their energies, they will use negative aggression. Children under 14 who have not yet developed their complete personalities should be engaged in positive sports or other forms of football in which their energies are not built into wrestling a fellow player into giving in.
When children are taught to wrestle for something, it develops their negative sense of competition, in which they only know that the best way to achieve a goal is to wrestle for it. The competition goes wrong in that they learn to fight for it in an aggressive manner. The players learn to wrestle completely and bring to the ground the opponent, which instils in them a symbolic sense of the same sort of competition. Positive competition does not depend on the hostility, wrestling or bringing to down of the opponent in the game. Children’s values can be greatly harmed if their aggressive behaviour is reinforced by such aggressive behaviour.
Football is a nice sport, and also there are many other sports in which concussions occur. Hockey, rugby and soccer are the sports that have equal amounts of chances of getting concussions, so those who consider football harmful want to ban it. They should also have to ban all these sports. Anger management kids can have a good relaxing time while playing football. I don’t understand why people want to take that from them. There is risk in every single sport, but people are just worried about football.
In conclusion football, tackle football should not be banned, but this does not mean that health and safety are not important. The health and safety of every player should be the no one priority of organizers. We should educate our parents about the techniques of football to our parents, coaches and, most importantly, players. We should give training on concussions to our leaders and coaches and also on proper tackling and blocking form. There should be a law that no player can play a match if he does not have a medical certificate.
