John Nicholson

Are you shocked by the huge number of injured players? Does it seem odd that the likes of Liverpool, Arsenal, Everton and many other clubs constantly seem to have a treatment room full of crocks? Well I have news for you. Men, we are not the men we used to be. We are becoming women.

Some see, what is being called, 'the feminisation of the male' to be one of the main reasons behind so many football injuries. That modern day footballers are physically weaker, less tough and are thus more inclined to get injured and be unable to get over the injury quickly.

The injury count at many clubs is quite extraordinary at the moment, with some clubs having over a dozen players out injured, whereas it's not that long ago that clubs could win a league fielding less than 15 players all season long. It is a remarkable change and one that has not gone unnoticed.

Now, despite a lifetime dedicated to ingestion of various medicines, I'm not actually a medical man, but I know a man who is. A proper one. He's called Dec the Doc. It doesn't say that on the door of his practice but it's what I call him because I'm childish and quite possibly a girl. He can tell a labia from a tibia. In short, he's got all the proper learning despite studying medicine at Newcastle University whilst drunk most of the time.

He's writing a paper about the feminisation both physically and culturally of men, part of which looks at the massive amount of injuries in modern day football compared to 25 or more years ago.

Now, it's always tempting for a man such as myself to accuse your modern day player of being a soft little nancy boy in comparison to the brutish alpha males of the 60s and 70s. I mean, Jermaine Jenas would have been thought to be a girl in the 70s, or possibly a lesbian folk singer. But I didn't expect medical science to be on my side - I assumed it was just plain old fogeyism on my part.

But Dec the Doc, points to actual evidence to prove his case - see I told you he was educated and that. Now, I won't give you the full lecture but in short a cocktail of pollutant chemicals in the water from PCBs, pesticides, plastics and many other things are 'endocrine disrupters' which basically means you grow up less male and more female. Baby boys are even born with smaller penises these days because of it - what sort of job is that? Did you have a nice day at the hospital with your ruler, darling?

He also reckons that there is so much estrogen in the water from women who take the pill that it both increases sterility and also makes men more female as they consume it.

Clearly, I'm boiling down a complex theory to a couple of lines but this is the essence of it.

My response to this was to ask why the sterility didn't seem to affect the wasters in trackie bottoms who live on the dole and reproduce the species at a ferocious rate despite the fact that many of them are surely too fat to find their genitals.

He accused me of being reactionary and pointed to lower sperm counts amongst many men across all classes. Why, he asked, when physiotherapy is so good, do players suffer so many more injuries than 30 or 40 years ago when players were less fit, played much more football, had worse diets, played on awful pitches and when physical aggression was a major part of the game?

At this point I tried to imagine myself as one of those F365 readers who reads the website seemingly in order to become very angry and writes to say we (or at least me) are morons; what would he say about these aspersions being cast on their masculinity?

I imagined the fact that the game is faster and players are athletes and as such as prone to more injuries would be raised as a major issue. Is it a valid like for like comparison to put Dave Mackay next to Rio Ferdinand, say? Doesn't football require a different sort of physique to play it these days? A slimmer, faster, leaner man. A Neil Ruddock-style big bruiser wouldn't get near the top level anymore

He pooh-poohed this, and it's not a pleasant site seeing a doctor pooh-poohing. He argues that had the physical changes in many men not happened, we'd now have a generation of super-strong, super-fit players, less prone to injury than ever before.

He says that the strain put on joints and muscles when you are being kicked and have to play on a sticky, muddy pitch is far greater than put on them sprinting along a flat, smooth modern carpet. He also added something about how the modern pasta diet of slow-release carbs feed muscles better and should protect them from injury better than the steak and Guinness pre-match meal of yore, but only if the underlying physique is robust.

I proffered the idea that clubs are just keener these days to protect their expensive assets and so don't rush a player back from injury or take him off quicker if injury is suspected. They can identify injuries more accurately.

He countered by saying, 'Even allowing for the fact that some injuries can be identified today which couldn't be a generation ago - the huge disparity between the amount then and now is not explained purely by that. Injuries are at an all time high despite all the protection in legislation and from medicine. There is every reason to believe that some, though far from all men in football and outside of it, are not as tough or as resilient as they once were and especially those under 25 who have received the great amount of endocrine disrupters from birth. They even seem to have a lower pain threshold than a generation earlier. We know that endocrine disrupters are at an all time high. It must be a factor in some footballers' development as men and one way it might manifest itself is in a lack of robustness.'

He also believes - though admits he can't prove this - those over-emotional men who are prone to tearful tantrums and hysterical over-reaction, is all part of the same condition. 'Old-fashioned male stoicism is being bred out of us physically and culturally' he says. Oooh, get him. What a brute.

'Alex Ferguson commented on this the other day when looking at a photo of a brawl between Leeds and Man United players in the mid 60s, pointing to the fact that the crowd look on impassive, whereas these days they'd be going mad. That is a big culturally and emotional shift within one generation. Something is causing that.'

There's certainly a lot of research into this as I looked up a few articles on the matter just to make sure he wasn't pulling my leg. But then again, there's a lot of research into all sorts of whacko nonsense. And even if it was true there's not much we or our football clubs can do about it in the short-term. If it's true they're stuck with a load of girlies then that's just the way it is.

All the gender-bender chemicals need to be removed from the water, the land and the food or we'll all turn into ladyboys. But is becoming a bit more like a lass really a bad thing? As long as we don't actually start to menstruate, obviously.

So next time you start to tear up while watching Eastenders, disappoint a lady with your manliness in the bedroom or 'get a twinge' and have to be subbed, you can tell the wife or the manager that it's not your fault, it's those damn endocrine disrupters kicking in again, you big girl.