Friday Freebie: Injury can strike at any time but are you prepared?

Take care of yourself before someone else has to take care of you

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Back in mid-September my Trev Talks podcast with Billericay Town striker Ade Azeez (link below) was a chat around player insurance in non-league football. While clubs have to take out compulsory cover as part of their affiliation to each County FA no doubt it doesn’t contain a huge amount to replace time off work for a lot of players at this level should they sustain a serious injury.

Click here to listen to the Trev Talks podcast with Ade

Professional players of course have the help of the PFA (Professional Footballers Association) which carries on for them even if they drop into the non-league game.

Those who play non-league only don’t have the same protection as their professional counterparts and these are the ones who need more education and help.

Plenty of players within the pyramid are self-employed and one bad injury can keep a player off work for months, even without an operation. How many times do you head onto social media and see clubs, fans or family members having set up a ‘go fund me page’ or similar to help cover lost earnings?

Should it fall down to others to in effect compensate in this way? Yes, it’s seen as a nice thing to do and many have been lucky to see the generous side of people in times where money is stretched for many but what happens when that generosity runs out? Where does the money from then?

In no way here am I blaming players. Like people in all walks of life you think things will never happen to you, and granted some of these guys will play for 20 years and not pick up a single bad injury, but for every say five of these one suffers and not the means to get by without financial help.

There is a lot of education that needs to change and to happen for non-league footballers. There needs to be a better understanding of the impact that an injury can have on them from a financial point of view, a loss of earnings and the mental as well as physical rehabilitation that comes with a serious injury.

Into that you can also add what would happen if that injury were to be serious enough to end a football career, how would that affect the same points mentioned above? Again, it might not happen but what’s the harm in having the right cover in place?

Ade himself has recently undergone meniscus and ACL repair surgery, he’s had previous injuries in the past and recognises what players can have in place and while no player has an obligation to have anything in place, it’s a small price to pay.

I have no affiliation to Ade nor his insurance company, there are others out there, just a way to make the information available to make an informed choice, I’d love to see the amount of these funding pages being used to decrease because players have thought it and covered themselves sufficiently, but that’s not for me to tell them what to do, one day a go fund me page won’t be there and then what? Let’s not get to that point……….

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Should there be much more put in place in terms of education for non-league players on this subject and also much more within the game? Let me know in the comments below.