Dementia probe for FA’s Clarke
FA CHAIRMAN Greg Clarke will be asked by a parliamentary watchdog to reveal when long-awaited research into possible links between dementia and the sport will be delivered. There is mounting frustration from the families of former players who have waited 15 years for answers. A BBC documentary fronted by Alan Shearer last night revealed that the Professional Footballers’ Association does not know how many former players are suffering from dementia. Damian Collins, chairman of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport select committee, told
Sportsmail last night that he will be writing to Clarke ‘asking if he can set out the timetable for when this will be delivered’. The FA said that promised research will be commissioned ‘within weeks’.
It was the story of Chris Nicholl which broke your heart. In the days when he had a currency in football, marshalling aston Villa’s central defence or, as southampton manager, giving alan shearer his big break, the sport wanted to know about him. Now, the fraying threads of his mind leave him adrift and struggling to compute rudimentary details. ‘when you forget where you live… when somebody says, “where do you live?” and you’ve forgotten that…’ Nicholl told shearer, in the BBC1 documentary Dementia,
Football and Me last night. He didn’t complete the sentence but said enough for us to know that he must be in a frightening place — losing his memory and knowing it. It was the kind of testimony which should leave those in power determined to turn every stone to find out whether football might have contributed to the thickening fog in so many ex-players. the shearer documentary established that the Professional Footballers’ association (PFa) do not know how many of their members might have dementia. that’s right: the players’ union has not even undertaken a cursory study of those affected, the minimum requirement for any organisation intending to demand scientific research in their members’ interests. we won’t know for sure whether there is a link between heading a football and neuro degeneration until a study is undertaken which compares players with the general population. But what shearer’s documentary exposed above all was a lack of curiosity about a possibility first raised at the inquest of the west Bromwich albion striker Jeff astle, fully 15 years ago. On a human level, that makes you rage when former Grimsby town striker Matt tees could not say which teams he used to play for. ‘Luton and…’ he replied, falteringly, after shearer had asked him the one question he assumed the one-time Division Four winner would be able to answer. tees’ wife, May, finished the answer for him and my own conversation with her on Friday revealed the myriad small sorrows attached to the place she and he now occupy. the world is ‘frightening’ for her husband, Mrs tees told me. ‘we had dealings with the PFa when they paid for the first of Matt’s two hip replacements,’ she said. ‘we contacted them about a second one but they said we’d had our allocation by then. I didn’t like to ring about the dementia. we’ve been too busy getting on with living and coping.’ the documentary revealed shearer to be an impressive investigator, covering ground through quiet and understated persistence. there were discoveries that are not widely known: young girls experience concussion more than young boys, for instance. Children suffer more ‘wobbling of the brain’ inside the skull, as they have larger heads and smaller necks. Because their brains are developing, they are less protected. there was a lack of ostentation about shearer’s obvious indignation, too, and it was all the more powerful because of that. ‘the surprising thing for me,’ he said, ‘is that no one has stepped up and said, “Yeah, we messed up here. we had a chance to do something 15 years ago and we haven’t”.’ Gently, he attempts to coax his old manager towards the notion of seeing doctors, too. ‘Don’t you think they could help you?’ But Nicholl is implacable. He’ll forget where he put his toast or the knife he’s used to butter it with, he tells the man whose career he launched. ‘But doctors won’t change anything.’
watch Alan Shearer: Dementia, Football and Me, on BBC iPlayer.