DUE care and concern need to be taken for our national representatives, and they should be made to undergo compulsory entry physical examinations before being selected to national teams, according to senior football team doctor Carlton Fraser.

“We must deal with basic prerequisites before the athlete goes on the field… once we’re not doing that, we’re doing a gross injustice,” Fraser told the Sunday Observer during a recent interview.

Fraser, a surgeon and doctor of integrative medicine, said he was pushing for the policy to be put in place, especially in light of five unexplained deaths associated with performance which had occurred since November last year.

The latest was that of a 12-year-old student from Excelsior High School who collapsed on the field during a schoolboy football game in September.

“A track athlete, a swimmer… and nobody knows anything,” Fraser said.

“It’s a matter for urgent and practical application,” he stressed, adding that there were some basic things he takes into consideration before an athlete even enters the field of play.

“Before I think about how a player performs I think about whether he is adequately hydrated… adequately recovered from long travel… is he suffering from sleep deprivation … adequately supplemented or has any injury that is lingering to say ‘yes, he is ready to play’,” he pointed out.

“You have to have more serious screening physicals for national players at all levels.”

Fraser, who was also the team doctor for the Sunshine Girls, said the situation became even clearer for

him after conducting a basic physical examination on the netballers.

“When we examined the girls, of 18, 16 were anaemic,” he stated. “Two were so anaemic we had to call the coach immediately to remove them from the game, from training, from practise, from any strenuous activity.”

Fraser said the stress of travel, including long-haul flights in pressurised cabins, could also lead to injuries if players were not properly hydrated before they take part in strenuous physical activity. He said that could be the reason behind the injuries suffered by athletes — who had to fly across several time zones to take part in the event in Delhi, India — at the recent Commonwealth Games.

He noted especially that the national netball team does not do as well in series where they have to do extended travel.

“Where we fail is that after having cases like that we still refuse to put in place entry physicals with qualified personnel going through the athletes,” he said.

“It’s the same thing in cricket with these inconsistent performances… you had certain problems going in and no one checked you.”

Fraser told the Sunday Observer that the integrity of his own equipment was called into question when he started doing did checks on some teams.

“Some of them, their blood pressure was so low that it was said the equipment I was using was inadequate and irregular.”

He said after all of the evidence, he was pushing to have any player named to the national football squad at any level to have an entry physical.

“(Because) a youngster who was named earlier this year came in, I did an entry physical on him, and I found a heart condition,” Fraser cited as an example of the seriousness of the matter.

“He eventually got open heart surgery and is now back on the team,” he stated. “If he hadn’t had that surgery he would now be a statistical evidence of our own neglect.

“We have to do it,” he emphasised. “We cannot assume that because you see a footballer running around that he is all right.”

“There is no doubt about what we should be doing and we cannot get into philosophies about it anymore because the scientific fact is there,” he stated.

“The requirement is universal because death waits on no level,” he declared.