Taylor ‘has blood on his hands’ over dementia crisis
hsutton tells MPS players’ union and FA ‘haven’t been interested’ hgovernment is urged to ‘take ownership’ of scandal
The football authorities were lambasted over the sport’s dementia crisis yesterday during an extraordinary parliamentary session in which MPS were told that players’ chief Gordon Taylor “has blood on his hands”.
Chris Sutton, the former England and Blackburn striker, and Dawn Astle, who runs the Jeff Astle Foundation, appeared before the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport committee and made a direct appeal for the Government “to take ownership” of the scandal. “The FA and PFA haven’t done nearly enough – they haven’t been interested because it doesn’t benefit them in any way,” Sutton said. “Gordon Taylor, who is stepping down now [as PFA chief executive], has blood on his hands.
“The FA and PFA have only started to act because they have been embarrassed into acting because of campaigns. They have been exposed. This meeting should have happened 20 years ago. As members of parliament, you have the power to hold football to account. Because football will continue to kick the can down the road if it’s enabled to.”
Astle has long called for Taylor’s resignation after research following her father’s death in 2002 was delayed, and then did not deliver answers over the prevalence of dementia in British football. “I believe that the study was shoved in a drawer, that drawer was locked, and it only came out because we challenged where it was,” Astle said.
“Every slice of my dad’s brain had trauma in it. We assumed incorrectly that the inquest ruling of industrial disease would be a defining moment. In any other industry a finding like that would have earthquake-like repercussions. Not football. My dad’s death didn’t matter. I believe football’s privileged status of self-governing is why. They should hang their heads in shame.”
MPS were aghast when Dr Charlotte Cowie, the FA’S head of performance medicine, did not provide specific details of past funding levels into concussion and dementia research. The PFA and FA previously funded a £250,000 study by the University of Glasgow, which found that former players were 3.5 times more likely to die of neurodegenerative disease. The FA has also put out a call for new research and, with the Premier League, is working on a study to trial head impacts using mouthguards.
These findings, suggested Cowie, will then inform heading limits in training. “Limiting the number and possibly the type is definitely the direction we need to go in,” she said.
Julian Knight, the chair of the DCMS committee, wanted to know the budget for future research and, after Cowie said that there was “no funding limit”, asked for their recent investment. No figure was forthcoming. “I’m staggered that you have not come here furnished with information of how much you are spending in the last year,” he said. “It is completely unacceptable. I’m absolutely appalled.”
The Daily Telegraph launched its “Tackle Football’s Dementia Scandal” campaign in 2016. “We have all this science, all this history, and we are now doing another survey after another survey,” Heather Wheeler, MP for South Derbyshire, said.
Taylor has always defended his handling of the dementia crisis. A spokesperson said that the PFA “was fully committed to supporting former members” and had “helped lead the way on groundbreaking research”. They also said that they had extended funding for research and enhanced their care structure for former players. The PFA also stressed that it was lobbying for temporary concussion substitutes and heading limits in training.