The Campaigner
John Stiles, a former pro footballer, is the son of 1966 World Cup-winner Nobby, who died in October 2020 with advanced dementia and prostate cancer. His brain was donated to science and discovered to have CTE I know that my dad was killed by heading the ball.
His brain was sent to Dr Willie Stewart, who found CTE right the way through. I estimated that in my dad’s career, he headed the ball at least 70,000 times.
I’m an ex-pro. I played for Leeds in the 1980s, and we would use old match balls in training. Sometimes, the cover had come off; they were like concrete. Centreforwards and centre-halves, they’d head the ball 30 or 40 times a day. You do that four days a week and multiply that for 38 weeks of the year, and it’s obvious what’s happening. It’s an industrial disease.
But even now, I don’t think players are aware of the risks. It’s outrageous that it’s been 19 years since Jeff Astle’s diagnosis [one of the first footballers whose disease and death was linked to heading the ball]. That’s nearly two generations of players who have been allowed to play uninformed and unprotected. It’s a scandal. There needs to be immediate action to reduce heading in training.
There has to be an agreement, similar to the one with the NFL, where a big fund is set up by the Premier League, the FA, the clubs. It needs to happen immediately, because the families are desperate.
Footballing bodies are fully aware of this. It seems to me that they have chosen not to deal with it because football is one of the biggest businesses in the world, and they’re terrified of the compensation and other repercussions.