Duncan Barkes

So I don't know what exactly Cortisone did.

I'm going to go away and look it up now that I've mentioned it.

What I'm saying here is that it's quite possible that some aspect of the game and the way in which players are trained...

and asked to play could have some responsibility for all these injuries.

In which case we really have to get to the bottom of it, not just from the point of view of football, from just the point of view of humanity.

All these young men who are laid up for weeks and months on end.

Goodness knows what it does to them mentally and physically.

So hurry up, eggheads.

There you are.

I was about right, wasn't I?

That is my memory of it as well, that certain risks were known, but the benefits they thought at the time outweighed the risks.

I don't think it's used anymore, but there may be practices that seem perfectly good and healthy.

to the experts nowadays that in the not too distant future will be allowed to recede or even disappear from the training side of the game.

That was a summary of the piece by the BBC's Dan George.

To see the whole thing, you need to go to the BBC website.

There's very little there that you will learn that you didn't know before, although I suppose it's vaguely useful for us ordinary fan folk to be reminded that technically a throw-in is a set piece.

And so is a penalty.

Anything that restarts the game after the game has been halted for whatever reason is a set piece.

But I don't think any football fan counts throw-ins as set pieces in the same way as we count corners and free kicks just outside the box.

Those are set pieces.