Time we faced football’s link to fatal illness
SIR Bobby’s diagnosis will strengthen demands for action on the disturbing link between football and dementia.
And it will increase calls to do more to support the families of those players living with the devastating condition.
Nobby Stiles, Martin Peters, Jack Charlton and Ray Wilson, all members of the 1966 World Cup team of heroes, have died in the last couple of years and had lived with dementia.
Sir Alf Ramsey, the manager of the 1966 team, also had dementia before his death at the age of 79.
Twelve months ago analysis, funded by the Professional Footballers Association and the FA, proved there was a link between dementia and football.
The study found there was a five-fold increase in the risk of Alzheimer’s.
There was a fourfold increase in motor neurone disease and a two-fold increase in Parkinson’s among former players.
In 2002, a Staffordshire coroner concluded, when examining the death of former West Brom forward Jeff Astle, that heavy, rain-sodden footballs – coupled with the game’s physicality – might have been a cause of his neurodegeneration.
His daughter Dawn has spearheaded the campaign for research into the area.
She said: “Our hope back then was we might establish a real understanding of the link within perhaps 10 years at least.
“That might mean we could help families, even though it was too late for people like my dad.”
Dawn, along with Judith Gates, the wife of former Middlesbrough defender Bill, are asking for the Industrial Illness Advisory Panel to formally consider dementia in football as an industrial disease.
World Cup hero Nobby Stiles’ son and granddaughter, Rob and Caitlin, have also supported a campaign to improve sport’s research into the link.