I’ve been reading yet another sad story about a retired footballer developing dementia, this time the former Leeds United and Manchester United centre-half Gordon McQueen. He died after a long struggle with Vascular dementia, which has been linked with heading a football. At his inquest, his daughter Hayley McQueen, a Sky Sports presenter, was asked by the family barrister whether he father had discussed what he thought might have caused his dementia. Heading the ball over his 16-year career, he replied, “probably hasn’t helped”.
We await to learn the result of the inquest, but the evidence has been mounting across football, and other sports like Rugby Union and Rugby League, that being repeatedly hit on the head, either by a football or by someone tackling you, “probably hasn’t helped”, as McQueen put it.
Compared to the era in which I grew up, footballs are incredibly light these days. It is not just down to a player’s limitations that a shot at goal can often end up in Row Z. When I played, mainly in the 1970s and 1980s, and briefly into the early nineties, the footballs of the day felt like medicine balls, increasing in weight if they became wet, which they often did in the British climate.
I started watching our local team, Brislington, play at Victory Park and marvelled at the strength and power of the players. You only realised just how heavy the footballs were when you and your mates went on the pitch at half-time for a kickabout in one of the goals with the match ball. Sometimes, you could barely get the ball off the ground. If the ball became airborne, you went to head it and soon wish you hadn’t. I remember seeing stars for a few minutes after heading the ball and having a mark from the lace of the ball on my forehead. Even during my tender years, I realised that this was not pleasant and while I didn’t know the potential dangers – no one did, back then – my main priority was to not head a ball at all. But the gnarly tough guys on the pitch seemed oblivious to discomfort. Clearly, I was a bit of a softy.
As the years went by, and my less than glittering career on the municipal park pitches of Bristol stumbled on, balls became lighter. Not always, though. Fortunately for me, I was a terrible header of a football, played in the heart of midfield as box-to-box destroyer (I was a chaser and fetcher for the genuinely talented players) and my lack of heading ability didn’t matter. I wish I had been a better player, as did my team mates, but I am glad I didn’t head the ball much, having now read about the story of Gordon McQueen and numerous other players.
Looking back, a number of the men who I watched play back in the day went on to develop dementia. One man, who I got to know very well through his son, always spoke slowly, with a monotonal drawl. I thought nothing of it – I guess I just thought that was his shtick – but years later he too developed dementia and died not remembering a thing about his life, nor who he was and had become. He was a highly impressive defender, no one beat him in the air. Was it coincidence, something in his DNA and genes that caused his dementia, or was it something else? In his case, we may never know. In the case of people dying with and of dementia today, we may well find out someday soon just how damaging head contact with a ball or with an opponent could be.
We do not know for sure just how damaging the repeated heading of footballs could be to a footballer, but we can probably make an educated guess. Everyone has seen a boxer who has become ‘punch drunk’ – ie. brain damaged – by being repeatedly hit on the head. Why not a footballer, too?
No less than five members of England’s World Cup winning team of 1966 have died with or from dementia. That sounds an incredibly large number: five out of 11. And if I was a player today, I wonder if I might think twice before heading a ball for fear of what might happen in years to come.
The verdict in Gordon McQueen’s inquest may tell us much more and if it does, I do wonder for how much longer we can go on this same way with men and women having their lives ruined due to avoidable injuries. Already, children are prevented from heading balls in training. This is because we are concerned about the risks to a young person’s developing brain. It’s hard to imagine football banning heading altogether but if we find out conclusively that heading a football causing major and irreversible brain damage to the players, are we just going to do nothing about it?
