Heading caused this ... his job should carry a health warning
LYNDA YOUNG, WIFE OF ARSENAL WARRIOR WILLIE, OPENS UP ON 69-YEAR-OLD SCOT’S ALZHEIMER’S FIGHT
THE consultant looked at the scans. His analysis was quick, clear and brutal. ‘He told us: “Repetitive heading has caused this”,’ says Lynda Young, wife of Arsenal icon Willie.
The diagnosis followed. Willie Young, Arsenal’s often bloodied and bruised Scottish warrior, was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s at the age of 68. It did not come as much of a shock.
‘ Umpteen broken noses, a broken cheek, concussion several t i mes,’ says Lynda. She is speaking on Willie’s behalf but the couple are side by side.
Although he looks the picture of health, continues to play golf and hits the cross trainer under her instructions each day, Willie sometimes struggles to communicate, e s peciall y when not speaking face-to-face, and we are talking virtually due to Covid.
‘When I saw what happened with David Luiz, playing with a bandage on his head,’ Lynda adds, referring to the Arsenal centre half who was bloodied but carried on against Wolves this month. ‘I thought: “God, I saw Willie like that a lot of times”.’
‘He once had stitches because Joe Jordan’s teeth had stuck into his head. But he wouldn’t dream of coming off. If you didn’t stay on you’d never play again. That wasn’t him. They used to sing “Six foot two, eyes of blue, Willie Young is after you”.’
Just the other week, an Arsenal supporter sent a picture of the c ommanding, f l ame- haired centre- half, who played 170 league games for the club, to the family home east of Nottingham, asking for it to be autographed.
The image (right) captured him in what was an all-too regular pose. Blood streaked across his head. While further stains blended in with the famous red shirt, the white shorts were also flecked with crimson. They are wounds which left an indelible mark, discovered last December at Grantham and District Hospital.
‘The consultant looked at the MRI scan and said the repetitive heading has caused his brain to shrink on the left-hand side,’ Lynda explains. ‘Because of the nerve damage, the brain is not getting the proteins it should.’
LYNDA is firmly behind Sportsmail’s campaign for football to finally tackle its dementia scandal. This newspaper is calling on the Government to class dementia as an industrial disease, caused in many cases by playing football and suffering repetitive head injuries.
‘ When t hey si gned a pro contract there was absolutely no mention that this job should have a health warning,’ Lynda says. ‘No warning like you get on a ci garette packet. All t hat heading. All those collisions. And there hasn’t been progress. It’s still not in the contracts.’
We are also demanding more financial assistance from the PFA and FA for those dealing with the disease and for more research, after Dr Willie Stewart’s FIELD study found that footballers were three and a half times more likely to die of a neurodegenerative disease than the general public.
‘The risks were never explained to Willie,’ she says. ‘It was: “This is your money and you need to sign there”. There was no health aspect at all.
‘I feel that football has let them down, that the PFA has let them down. I went to the PFA for help and they told me to see a doctor.’
The financial element looms. ‘Who’s going to pay £1,500 a week for the social care you need if it gets to that?’ she asks. ‘Willie earned about £150 a week during his career, £200 tops with bonuses. He paid his subs and he put his body on the line.
‘The PFA, the clubs, even FIFA should be contributing towards the care of players from that era because they weren’t well rewarded and were not protected by their contracts.
‘(Outgoing PFA chief) Gordon Taylor gets £2million and what does Willie get? Nothing. Nothing back for the union fees he paid every month out of a small wage in a time when taxes were a lot higher. He was there when they needed him, where are they now?’
Since we interviewed Willie and Lynda, the PFA have promised immediate assistance for families caring for ex-players suffering from the disease.
The news of Young’s diagnosis has been kept private until now. Former Arsenal team-mates are aware and have offered support. ‘Pat Jennings is often on the phone,’ says Lynda. ‘They had a reunion for the 1979 FA Cup final. Liam Brady organised it and Willie was back to being himself with all the boys.’
The warning signs had been spotted by the couple’s children.
‘ They’d ask: “Do you think Dad’s all right? Do you think he’s remembering?” Then it got worse. If I went to the kennels (the pair run a business accommodating dogs and cats) I’d come back and he would have emptied the drawers and put everything back.’
Then came that diagnosis. A rock of a man, born in Edinburgh who made his name in the granite city of Aberdeen, who played in t hree FA Cup f i nals and a Cup Winners’ Cup final, who traded punches on the pitches of England for Tottenham, Arsenal and Nottingham Forest, would face his toughest opponent.
‘The consultant said nobody survives dementia ,’ Ly nd a recalls. ‘ Told us it’s a physical disease attacking the brain. It completely destroys it — all they can do is help to slow it down.’
Despite the diagnosis, there remains humour. Willie replies ‘ kind of ’ when I ask if he still enjoys j his golf.
‘He’s been done for reckless driving!’ Lynda says. ‘ Going all over the fairway in the buggy. They’ve also had a go at him for hitting his ball before the people in front have cleared off!’
Not abiding by the rules, however, is nothing new. Young, along with Billy Bremner, was one of the ‘Copenhagen Five’ banned for life from playing for Scotland after a boozy, brawly, legendary night out in the Danish capital.
When the photographer arrives, Willie is on fine form. ‘ Back to being the centre of attention like the old days,’ Lynda says. But there are constant reminders.
‘Sometimes we’ll see someone on the telly and he’ll say he knows their face but doesn’t know who they are,’ Lynda explains. ‘ The other week he said it about David O’Leary, who he played alongside for years.’
Willie, however, is keen to point out his relationship with compatriot and former Spurs team-mate John Duncan is still strong. ‘Big Dunc’s the best,’ he says.
T HE couple speak of Willie’s ability to hit the headlines for the wrong reason. When he went back to play against Spurs with Arsenal they used to boo him but cheer Pat Jennings, who had also made the switch. ‘I got beer and pies thrown at me and he got roses,’ says Willie.
Lynda is in no doubt what has caused all this. ‘Willie’s mother died of Covid this year at 98,’ she says. ‘His father lived until he was 80- odd. There were six on one side of the family, seven on the other and all lived long lives. Not one had dementia.’
When the fan sent the picture, taken at a typically feisty north London derby, she made a copy.
‘Willie used to say that he might not have the most skill but he had the biggest heart,’ she says.
‘He got injuries like that making sure his team would win. It was his job. Now we need football and the Government to do theirs.’