I rage over game’s neglect of sufferers like dad

MY old strike partner Alan Shearer and I shared an understanding on many things, especially in that season when we scored 49 between us and won the league with Blackburn. Now it’s an appreciation of the desperation that comes for the families of players who develop dementia and then know no kind of life at all.

Alan’s BBC documentary tonight on possible links between the illness and the game is as good as I knew it would be. He’s discovered what our family came to know when we watched my dad, Mike, slowly decline. He was still in his 60s when he first showed symptoms. He loved football, played 51 times for Norwich, but he sits there now and doesn’t know what time of day it is. When I call home to talk to him and mum, he can’t make any coherent sense.

I’ve learned a lot from what Alan’s found out, though it surprised me least to hear Gordon Taylor, the chief executive of our players’ union, say he didn’t have the foggiest idea how many might be affected. A union concerned about the effects of this on players would canvass its members to find out how deep the problem went. What would that be, 5,000 to reach?

But no one seems to want to consider this might be football’s problem. After I’d talked about dad on these pages a few months back I did an interview on Radio 5. I’d have thought the PFA might have called after, wanting to know more or what they could do for dad, or mum. There was never a call. Gordon went on air straight after me to give his view. I wish I’d known. I’d have loved a conversation.

It’s the lack of resolve to investigate why dad and others like him might have this condition that makes me rage. Perhaps if they were young, it would be different. Alan talks tonight about the anger he feels after meeting players like my dad and that’s another thing we share. But no emotion comes close to the sadness. It overwhelms you.

Dad and I would always be talking football on a day like today but we’ll never do that again.