‘Most important football match since 1863’ held for NeuroTrauma 2024 conference in Cambridge
A match dubbed the ‘most important game of football since 1863’ was held on Parker’s Piece in Cambridge on Sunday (1 September).
Played on the site in Cambridge where the rules of football were first established, it brought together world-leading brain injury neuroscientists and clinicians, coaches, ex-professional players and recreational players to showcase the evolution of the sport, and how it affects players’ brain health.
The match took place ahead of the International NeuroTrauma 2024 conference. Events open to the public include a symposium on sports head injury and concussion at Cambridge Corn Exchange from 9.00-11am today (Wednesday, 4 September).
Peter Hutchinson, incoming president of the International Neurotrauma Society, and Cambridge University Hospitals’ professor of neurosurgery, said: “We are very honoured to have been chosen to host NeuroTrauma 2024.
The match “set the stage for what will be an exciting week,” he said.
The match was hosted by Head Safe Football, a UK charity delivering education about the risk of head impacts, in collaboration with the International Neurotrauma Society.
Titled ‘Bill Gates’ Legacy: The Generation Game’, the occasion was named after the central defender, who played for Middlesbrough FC from 1961-74, who died in October 2023 at the age of 79 from a progressive brain disease after inspiring a nationwide campaign highlighting links between football and dementia.
Visitors were given a chance to play and learn about the Head Safe curriculum, which brings science to the football field and supports coaches, educators, scientists and players to learn about heading the ball and protecting the brain.
Then the Cambridge v The Rest of the World match took place in four quarters. Players had to follow the 1863 Rules of Football, then the current rules and then the new FA U9 rules, which make deliberately heading the ball an offence punishable by an indirect free kick, before a session imagining what the rules might look like in the future.
