Paul Wade’s warning leaves Football Australia with nowhere to hide on heading

July 24, 2026 — 1:33pm

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Long before he became boss of the Australian players’ union, Beau Busch was a centre-back – which means one of his primary responsibilities as a player was to strategically position his head to intercept an object travelling at high speed. Repeatedly.

As with many former footballers, but particularly those who were strong in the air, Busch sometimes wonders if by clearing danger for his teams so often, he will one day find himself in it, like former Socceroos captain Paul Wade.

“I played in a position where my strength really was heading and tackling. It certainly wasn’t ball-playing,” said Busch, the chief executive of Professional Footballers Australia, which helped manage Wade’s announcement.

“Having played in the UK for a couple of years, and the amount of time the ball spent in the air in Scotland … it’s absolutely a concern. It’s something of huge concern to all players.”

The discussion around the progressive degenerative brain disease CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy) in soccer, and its links with the fundamental skill of heading, is far from new.

After every new piece of research from abroad, every innovation around equipment designed to reduce the dangers, every high-profile English player’s death and the discovery of CTE, the subject is raised in Australia, the relevant authorities are questioned, a generic, non-committal response is provided, and everyone moves on until the next time it pops up. This has been the cycle for the past five or six years.

But this time, it’s different. What could once be dismissed as an abstract problem that only happened in other countries is no longer the case. Wade’s diagnosis of probable CTE – the disease can only be confirmed with a post-mortem examination – brings the discussion not only to Australian soccer’s doorstep, but inside the house. It’s here now. What are we going to do........

© WA Today