We should have been grieving for my dad not fighting for justice!
WILLIE STEWART and his colleagues sat in Glasgow University’s communications department last Monday at midday. An email was sent and more than a year’s worth of research was presented to the world. And they waited.
At 12.01 Dr Stewart’s phone rang. It hasn’t stopped since. He was exhausted when we met on Thursday at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital to spend three hours dissecting the aftermath of one of the most significant turning points in the management of all competitive contact sports.
The research, though nuanced in many areas, was actually easily understood and stark. At Glasgow they were waiting for a backlash.
‘If you’re an academic, life is all about people criticising your work and, at times, tearing it to shreds,’ says Dr Stewart. ‘It’s all part of the game, a bit like rugby where you knock seven shades out of each other and go and have a beer afterwards.
‘But I think it has been harder for people like the Astle family, Amanda Kopel, Andy MacLeod, who is the son of Ally, who’ve had quite unacceptable behaviour that they’ve had to deal with on social media. The denials and ‘you’re messing with the game’ … it’s difficult.’
It is a poignant moment. For the family of West Brom legend and England international Jeff Astle, who died at 59, this is about more than statistics and science, as daughter Dawn expresses eloquently.
‘These deaths should remain on the conscience of the game forever,’ she said. ‘All our families are due an apology. The massive responsibility of all this, players dying and the health of future generations ended up with us. It should never have been us.
‘I don’t care what the FA and PFA say, this research would not have been done if we had not shamed them, cornered them, into doing it.
‘All these wasted years of non-action. We could have known sooner and so could the others who are maybe awaiting a similar destiny.
‘At a time when we should have been grieving a dad, a husband, a granddad, we ended up fighting for justice and to find answers. We feel we don’t have to keep justifying it any more.’
It is a poignant moment for Kopel, who likewise has been tireless in her campaigning since the death of her husband Frank, who played for Dundee United and died of dementia in 2014, and for the families of England World Cup legends Nobby Stiles and Martin Peters, who are living with dementia.
And these are just the most highprofile names, representative of many more lower-league footballers, rugby players and others.
‘We can often be tied up in the numbers and the spreadsheets and the science and the microscopes and forget what we’re actually doing is working for people who are affected by this,’ says Dr Stewart.
The Astle family participated in the brain donation programme he leads at
Glasgow University, which enabled him to reveal that Jeff had died of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a degeneration of the brain caused by repeated blows to the head.
‘In reality it has been six years getting to this point [delivering research] but it has been 20 years for the Astle family and as long for many others. It’s been a long old journey.’
For the few who still question why this is important and querying Dr Stewart’s motives, this is a man who loved amateur rugby as a youth and student, playing for Cambuslang.
On his screen saver is a cherished memory of Scotland beating Australia at Murrayfield, a game he attended with his daughter. Married with two daughters, who are 21 and 19 and hockey players, this is a man who has a deep love of sport and the joys it brings. He will always stress the health benefits but has been unafraid to probe into areas some would rather he had not. Dr Stewart’s commitment to this research goes back 20 years. He is gracious to those who once resisted him.
‘Football as a sport and the FA have got it in the neck but credit to the FA and the PFA, because these organisations stood up when all the other organisations didn’t and funded this research.’
Dr Stewart is clear that his team’s research does not pinpoint that heading is the reason why footballers are more likely to die of brain diseases. It has simply established the fact that they do. ‘Given that research from people with head injuries in car crashes had produced similar results, it is a working hypothesis that exposure to head injuries, through collisions or fouls or heading, could be the decisive factor.’ Football has taken some steps to recognise the importance of
treating concussion, after previous research established a link between concussion and dementia.
World football now has a sixday ban from playing once concussion is diagnosed and had established a three-minute window to assess players on the pitch. Dr Stewart says the three-minute window is woefully inadequate.
Football is reluctant to allow a 10-minute temporary sub for fear of coaches gaming the system for tactical advantage.
Currently, once the threeminute on-pitch football window is over the doctor has to continue any diagnosis off the pitch, leaving the team a player short.
‘It’s horrendous,’ said Dr Stewart. ‘I can’t imagine how you could possibly do it. Leaving aside the pressure of looking at a player on the pitch, if you add in 50,000 people baying for the game to go on and throw in a TV audience and a player who’s desperate to play, that’s just not the way doctors operate. We like a quiet space and time. It should be directed by medical requirements, which is take them off the pitch and assess them properly.’ He says that further research is required over the next 30 years to isolate the reasons for the links. ‘We could do very sophisticated targeted studies on a smaller numbers of players. Rather than looking at 8,000 players, let’s look at 100 but let’s look at how their brain is working in five years, then in 10 years. At 50 their brains might be the same but when you get to 55 or 60 there might be slight differences.
‘No-one might have dementia but the brains are beginning to show differences. I’ve no illusions that the answer is going to come in my working life span, but here’s no reason why we can’t set up now.’
As for the backlash this week? ‘We were set for the flak for saying that there may be something wrong with the beautiful game but I’ve been amazed at how there has been virtually none.’
IF you would like to know more about donating your brain after death — especially if you have suffered a traumatic brain injury, such as in a car crash or assault, or have participated in contact sport — please register at https://gbirg.inp.gla.ac.uk/register-forbrain-donation/