TIME TO ACT!

Prime Minister urged to launch review into dementia scandal

A GROUP of ex-players, managers and politicians have urged the Prime Minister to launch a full review into football’s dementia crisis.

Former players Peter Reid and Viv Anderson and ex-Labour leader Lord Kinnock are among the signatories to letters sent to Boris Johnson and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, calling for an urgent investigation into the possible link between heading a ball and neurodegenerative diseases.

The game’s bosses could also be dragged before MPs to explain themselves amidst calls for the DCMS select committee to investigate whether former players who are suffering dementia are getting adequate support.

Sportsmail has been leading the campaign for more to be done to tackle football’s dementia scandal, with more research and support required for players suffering with the illness, and their families. The letters demand the UK

Government declare not enough is being done and call on Parliament to act ‘on the growing body of evidence that repeatedly heading the ball increases the chances of diseases such as dementia’.

The letters, sent by players to Secretary of State for DCMS Oliver Dowden and politicians to DCMS committee chair Julian Knight, reference Dr Willie Stewart’s FIELD study, reporting footballers were 3.5 times more likely to die of a neurodegenerative disease than the general population.

The letter to Knight calls for an investigation into whether new restrictions on heading at youth level, brought in by both the SFA and FA, go far enough and whether support offered to former footballers suffering from diseases such as Alzheimer’s and dementia is adequate. Should Knight decide to act and launch a hearing, the likes of Gordon Taylor, CEO of the under-fire Professional Footballers’ Association, could be hauled before politicians and ordered to explain the union’s role in the game’s response to dementia.

Ex-Chelsea and QPR man Clive Wilson, former Spurs playmaker Vinny Samways and ex-Hull City boss Phil Brown have all signed. Doncaster manager Darren Moore is included, with Mickey Ambrose, formerly of Charlton and Chelsea, co-ordinating the letter sent by players to Dowden.

The letter to Knight is signed by the likes of Lord Kinnock, former shadow foreign secretary Hilary Benn and Conservative MP Peter Bone.

Sportsmail has asked the Scottish Government for comment previously on the dementia scandal but has yet to receive a reply.