The youth football season is barely a month old but some of the county's youngsters are - literally - trying to get their head around a new rule.

Teams playing in the North Kent Youth League are part of a nationwide trial which has banned heading in football games at age groups up to and including under-12s.

There are growing fears that regular heading of a ball increases the risk of footballers developing dementia.

A similar ban has been in place in the United States since 2015.

"It's important to point out that it's a trial at the moment," explained Toby Elgar, the Kent FA's Football Development Officer for youth and mini football.

"The FA have brought in this trial for the 2022/23 season for under-12 football and below. This is following the FA introducing heading guidance in 2021 which advised that heading shouldn't take place in the same age groups.

"The aim of this trial is to see if the removing of heading is successful and therefore (potentially) bringing it in across all competitions at under-12 below for the 2023/24 season."

Dementia in football is not a new issue. Former West Brom and England player Jeff Astle died in 2002 at the age of 59, having been diagnosed with early onset dementia.

"I think there's still lots of unknowns and that's one of the reasons why the FA have brought in this trial," added Elgar.

"You see stories now of footballers that are suffering many years later with head-related injuries or issues later in life.

"The quality of footballs and weight of footballs has changed over time but there's still lots of unknowns. If we can remove that risk of heading a ball while children are young and their brains and heads are still developing, it's important to minimise the risk they face when heading a football.

"There's still lots of research going on but it wouldn't have been brought in had there not been some kind of indication that this is for the good of children's health and looking long term and their life.

"The message is to stick with it, it's there to help and the impact on football matches should be very minimal."

If a players heads the ball in games where the trial is taking place, the referee has been instructed to award an indirect free-kick to the opposing team.

"It's an indirect free-kick which is the first time indirect free-kicks have been brought into mini and youth soccer," said Elgar.

"It's been brought in, in relation to the guidance. How often heading occurs at those age groups? It doesn't happen very often. I've coached in Kent for many years at these age groups.

"When this trial was announced, I had conversations with other coaches that I've worked with before and tried to remember how many times a football was headed in youth football matches and I couldn't remember many so the impact should be very little."

While teams - and referees - in the North Kent Youth League are getting used to the new rules, others in the county are carrying on as they are.

Elgar doesn't believe it will cause any confusion for players, although referees will need to be alert if they switch between competitions.

The message to parents is that any changes to the laws of the game are to protect children.

"It's only at a trial stage at the moment and the reason for a trial is to try and work out the best way to introduce this," said Elgar.

"What's been brought in now might not be what is implemented over the summer for the 2023/24 season so that's why it is at the trial stage. All of these things can be ironed out and worked through to make it the best experience possible for children in football."

So why has only one league in Kent opted to adopt the new law this season?

It appears, quite simply, that volunteer capacity was the main reason putting other leagues off.

"Leagues across Kent and the country were invited to participate in this trial," said Elgar. "It came out quite late in (terms of) preparations for this season.

"Sixty competitions across the country signed up, which equates to just over one per county FA if you were to average that out.

"All our leagues that have eligible age groups were supportive of this but only one league has signed up for the trial which is the North Kent Youth League and the only reason the other leagues haven't signed up is not that they are not supportive of it, it is simply volunteer capacity to be able to trial the ban on heading.

"It's not just a case of signing up and adapting the rules, there are some other steps that leagues and volunteers have been asked to do across the season. Understandably, our leagues do a great job and volunteers give up many hours to do their best for their leagues and the clubs within them, a lot of them felt at this stage they couldn't commit to the additional work the trial would require.

"One league has signed up to participate. There might be some cross-over within clubs (of leagues) but I don't think it will lead to any confusion, especially if, as expected, it is brought in across all leagues next season."

One parent, who wished not to be named, told KentOnline that headers were still being allowed without action taken by referees.

He said: "I have seen three games in the North Kent Youth League at a young age group this season and in all the matches there were occasions where players deliberately headed the ball and no action was taken, although it is still unusual for headers anyway in the lower age groups.

"One referee had officiated a Medway Youth League before the NKYL game and wasn't sure if it was being implemented. It seems to be down to the individual referee at the moment, headers certainly aren't being penalised at the moment from what I've seen."

Former professional footballer Jack Midson now coaches youngsters in Kent.

He can see both sides of the argument.

"I understand why they are saying it and if the evidence is there then you can’t risk people’s health, whether it is a child or an adult," said Midson.

"In training, it is our responsibility not to work on that in training, no heading drills. I am not going to stop and punish them if they do head it, but I definitely won’t work on it. When they are young, they might head it once or twice in the game, it is not a major thing, they are not doing it 100 times in a game.

"My boy is eight and he likes to head it, if it comes he will naturally head it, if I tell him not to he is going to duck and it might be in the back of his own net, so he would lose his confidence. I am not going to encourage them not to but if it is a last-ditch header and he does it, if the referee gives a free-kick you have to take it.

"It is a rule for under-12s but what happens when they get to 12? Nobody will know how to head the ball, a lot of my career was heading the ball!

"I may not have played in the Football League if I couldn’t head the ball, a lot of my goals came from headed goals, in Football League or non-league. It would have halved my goal tally!

"Will they introduce it? I am not sure, they are talking about kick-ins and not throw-ins and keeping the ball on the floor, that is linked, you throw it and you get a lot of headers coming from throw-ins. Maybe they should change rules like that to compensate.

"That might help rather than banning headers altogether. Keeping the ball on the floor, you are going to only get one or two headers in a game at most."

Matt Bruce, interim league secretary for the Maidstone Invicta Primary League, believes their clubs wanted to see a staggered introduction of the ban on heading, starting at a lower age group.

He said: "We have carefully considered this as a league committee and at this stage will not be volunteering to take part in the trial.

"The main reason for us coming to this conclusion is around the lack of guidance available from the FA/Kent FA on the interpretation of the laws of the game. We feel that this puts unnecessary pressure on our referees, a number of whom are young and inexperienced.

"There is also a requirement for leagues to provide feedback and the lack of resources on the League Committee this season would make this extremely difficult.

"It is highly likely that the heading ban will be introduced for season 2023/24 and we will use the experience learnt during the coming trial season at that point.

"Members clubs were generally in favour of this approach and feel that this would be better phased in from under-7s over a number of seasons, rather than a blanket change for teams who have been playing with headers for a number of years.

"Personally I think there are better ways to achieve the FA's objective by reduce heading rather than ban it - for example not allowing goalkeepers to take a drop kick, this would also improve their general football skills.

"I also have concerns that if adopted next season then in a few years' time there will be players moving into under-13s football who have never headed a ball in training or a match."

The Maidstone Youth Football League also chose not to participate in the trial.

League secretary Sarah Waite said: "At the time the request to participate came in from the FA we were already well into our preparations for the start of the new season and the ask came too late for us to set in place the necessary support for the trial.

"At the time of the trial request, there was a large amount of uncertainty on exactly how the removal of deliberate heading would be managed and dealt with in a game. The League Committee felt unable to commit given the brevity of detail.

"A final consideration was the added administration that the trial would put on already over stretched volunteers."

In 2017, The FA and the PFA appointed Dr William Stewart and colleagues at the University of Glasgow and the Hampden Sports Clinic to lead an independent research study into the incidence of degenerative neurocognitive disease in ex-professional footballers.

The FIELD study assessed the National Health Service records for 7,676 men who played professional football in Scotland, of which 1,180 have since passed away. The players studied were born between 1900 and 1976, with two thirds of those who had passed away born between 1926 and 1951.

The research, published in 2019, found that the health records of 11% of the former footballers who had passed away stated that they had died from dementia, compared to around 3% for the socio-demographically matched sample.

One of the Medical & Football Advisory Group's main recommendations was "that heading practice follows guidelines and that children only practice heading in proportion to the very infrequent number of times the ball is actually headed in youth games", which they say is around 1.5 headers per game in youth football.