Diolch, Ddirprwy Lywydd. I’m fairly confident this will be the shortest of short debates, the Minister will be pleased to hear, at the end of a long day.

I’m pleased to have this opportunity to raise the issue of chronic traumatic encephalopathy and its possible links with contact sports like football. I first became aware of this issue after hearing an interview with the wife of the late Frank Kopel, a former Dundee United player who was diagnosed with dementia at the age of 59. She’s been campaigning for greater awareness of CTE since Frankie’s death and has spoken very eloquently about her experiences in caring for him in later life.

Brain scans re-examined by Dr Willie Stewart, a neuropathologist, led him to the conclusion that Frankie’s condition was caused by years of repeated head impacts from other footballers and also heading footballs—bearing in mind that Frankie played in an era when footballs weighed around 450 g. The issue of a link between head injuries in sport and brain damage has been debated recently in relation to rugby and there are long-standing pointed debates in American football.

But, it’s only in the very recent past that a link between CTE and football is being fully discussed and considered. Last month, pioneering research was published by scientists from University College London and Cardiff University, focusing on retired footballers in the Swansea area. From 1980 to 2010, 14 retired footballers who had been referred to the old-age psychiatry service in Swansea were monitored until their deaths. All the retired footballers developed progressive cognitive impairment, and neuropathological examination revealed septal abnormalities in the six players where a postmortem brain examination was carried out. Twelve cases died from advanced neurodegenerative disease and four cases had pathologically confirmed CTE.

The study does not directly confirm a link between repetitive head impacts and CTE, but says that further research is needed. An average player heads the ball six to 12 times in a football match and at least 2,000 times in a 20-year career. But, head injuries are more likely caused by head-player contact than head-ball contact. The difficulty in identifying harm arises from the fact that most impacts are sub-concussive, meaning that they do not result in concussion or display overt neurological symptoms.

In my view, it’s far too early to make concrete assertions about footballers and CTE, beyond what we know from the most recent research in which Welsh scientists played a leading role. Indeed, the chief scientist of the Alzheimer’s Society has said the research carried out in Swansea does not provide proof that heading a football causes dementia, but it is clear—and there is agreement across research and among scientists on this—that further research is needed and there needs to be a raising of awareness of the impact of repetitive head injuries on a footballer over the course of their career.

As a football fan myself, I absolutely would not want to rush to conclusions and decide to make it harder for young people to participate fully in the sport. As a lover of the game, I would not want us to rashly rush to a situation where the nature of the game is materially changed. But, the purpose of my raising this short debate today and raising this specific issue is to ask Welsh Government if they would consider doing two things. Firstly, what is clear to me is that there is a need for raising awareness of CTE and head injuries in general in football, and how we deal with head injuries in the sport as they occur. Rugby has taken steps to protect players better when they have head injuries during match time. So, I wonder if the Minister would agree to at least consider convening a summit of football governing bodies and representative bodies in Wales to share information and best practice in the sport, which could involve experts in the field as well as scientific and medical experts, so that we share best practice and at the grass-roots level in particular, football coaches and parents and others involved can be aware to look out for signs of head-to-head contact and to take particular care and attention in determining whether it is safe for a player to continue.

Secondly, I wonder if the Minister would consider—seeing as Wales has been central to the most recent research, as I mentioned, with Cardiff University scientists involved in that research in Swansea—working with those involved to build on Wales’s potential global reputation in the area of CTE and sport research. So, perhaps the Welsh Government could hold an international conference on CTE and sport in Wales, maybe using the exposure of Wales in the UEFA Champions League final this year as a platform to garner interest and to invite FIFA, UEFA and football associations from around the world to come together with the scientific researchers and with the experts that we have in this country in the field. This could be another golden opportunity to strengthen Wales’s reputation as a global centre for excellence in research as well as, of course, learning much more about CTE and football, so that we can prevent the very sad cases that have happened in recent years in terms of long-term head injury and premature dementia. Diolch yn fawr.