died after sustaining a “significant brain injury”<\/a> while playing for Chichester City at Wingate and Finchley FC in September 2025.<\/p>\nIt is thought the injury was caused when he collided with a concrete wall.<\/p>\n
The review, conducted by independent health and safety experts for the 2026-27 season, said it “no longer permits solid brick, breeze block or concrete barriers around pitches across the National League system for men [steps 1-6], and the Women’s National League [tiers 3-4]”.<\/p>\n
An FA statement added: “Any existing solid brick, breeze block or concrete barriers must be removed as soon as reasonably practicable, or covered with suitable protection if they cannot be removed for structural reasons. <\/p>\n
“We have informed the clubs at this level that will be required to take action as a result of these changes.”<\/p>\n
Matches at affected grounds can continue as long as clubs assess “the safety of their pitch perimeter barriers on an ongoing basis” and plan to make changes “within a reasonable timeframe”.<\/p>\n
The FA and Premier League will provide funding to facilitate the changes.<\/p>\n
After Vigar’s death, a petition calling for a ban on brick walls around football pitches has received more than 4,000 signatures.<\/p>\n
The government and the Professional Footballers’ Association wrote to the FA, Premier League, English Football League and National League in June 2023, calling on them to adopt a more proactive approach to player safety in this area.<\/p>\n
That came after Bath City’s Alex Fletcher suffered a fractured skull<\/a> after colliding with a concrete advertising hoarding during a match in November 2022.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Football Association has banned solid perimeter walls around pitches after a safety review was launched following the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":730474,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[218,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-730473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-football","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/730473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=730473"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/730473\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/730474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=730473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=730473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=730473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}