I NEEDED PFA TO SPEND £40k TO SAVE MY LIFE . . . THEY REFUSED TO HELP
I WAS a member of the PFA from my teenage years. In those days it was an annual fee, taken out of your wages, plus they always got a share of any transfer fees. It was advertised that your membership raised the benevolent fund and once your playing days were over you were covered. But my recent experience of the PFA has been one of total neglect. I approached them in 2015 when I was diagnosed with a serious heart condition. My aortic root needed replacing. Initially I asked the PFA for assistance to get an MRI scan done privately as the NHS wait was months. The cost was £1,050 but the PFA were very reluctant. After several phone calls to chase them they agreed. Results revealed I needed an operation. Then there was an enormous wait and I found out it was because the PFA hadn’t paid the bill. Eventually they did but it meant that rather than speeding up the process it had slowed it down. The PFA then flatly refused to assist paying for my surgery. My wife Maureen worked as a medical receptionist so she got an estimate of £37,500 but when I told the PFA representative he went cold, saying: ‘We can’t afford those costs, we can cover knee and hip operations.’ I said: ‘You’re talking about somebody’s life here.’ My cardiologist suggested I give up with the PFA because I was well down the road on the NHS waiting list. After four postponements, I had the operation in February 2016. Throughout the 18-month process I felt I was stepping on eggshells. The specialist had said my condition would lead to an embolism, which is when an aneurysm bursts and your body fills with blood. I’d be dead before I hit the floor. In all that time the PFA knew about my problem but it was always me having to phone
them for advice. I never got a call from them and still haven’t had one. It wasn’t purely financial help I was looking for. I spoke to Gordon Taylor’s right-hand man and I burst into tears because of the effect it was having on my family. All I wanted was somebody who knew how to get a private operation to take all that pressure away. Somebody to pick up the phone, speak to the surgeons, organise and ask how I was. The NHS were brilliant. But it was galling that the PFA were sitting on huge amounts of money and couldn’t help with private care. That £2million Lowry painting, how much is it worth now? But to spend £40,000 on an ex-player, saving his life, what benefit do they get? They are out of pocket, that’s the way they look at it. Doctors don’t know if football was a factor in my heart condition, it could be genetic. I remember training at Everton. In those days we were fitnesstested twice a season and you had an endurance test where you ran across the gym, 40 yards there-back, there-back, and they crudely took your pulse. You weren’t allowed to stop until it went over 200 beats per minute. If your pulse gets anywhere near that rate nowadays — because they are hooked up to GPS — they are told to stop. I’ve heard stories that if you do that kind of exercise at a young age it exaggerates any deficiencies in your heart. It needs to be proven through research. As we have seen with dementia, the PFA do not lead the way. I’m not looking for sympathy and I can’t change anything, but maybe my story will mean it won’t happen to someone else.