Week 46:  The King And I Headed Too Many Footballs

For many football fans like me, especially young ones and even more especially those of us in the generations born before 1990, scoring the winning goal in the FA Cup Final was a dream.

Now, not so much, what with the way The Cup has been marginalised. Possibly playing for your country in the World Cup finals might be the dream now instead.

This article is about someone who did both. And less than thirty years later, he couldn’t remember doing either.

Another player who represented his country at a World Cup (and won it in 2003) announced this week that he, along with seven other former rugby players, are in the process of beginning a claim of millions of pounds due to negligence against the governing bodies of English, Welsh and World Rugby. They have all been diagnosed with the early signs of dementia; brain injuries caused by the repeated blows from tackling are the reason, the group said. Former-hooker, Steve Thompson, can’t remember the World Cup Final against Australia, or any of the other games he played in the tournament.

The aforementioned footballer was Jeff ‘The King’ Astle, beloved idol of West Brom fans. Since his death in 2002, his family have campaigned under the Justice for Jeff slogan. He didn’t even reach the age of Coronation Street, as a quick and aggressive onset of dementia took a hold of him and his life, played out in front of his loving family. I’ve just finished the audio book ‘The Beautiful Brain’ which tells Jeff’s story so vividly. It’s a stark reminder that this is a fight that’s still got a long way to go.

When Arsenal met Wolves on 29 November, David Luis was involved in a sickening clash of heads with Raul Jimenez before the game had reached the quarter hour mark. Jimenez went to hospital and is still there, making good progress after fracturing his skull. Luis continued to play until half-time, when he was replaced. Arsenal medical staff followed all the correct protocols although blood was clearly showing through his bandage as the first half continued following the lengthy stoppage.

BBC pundits, Alex Scott, Alan Shearer and Jemaine Jenas joined forces in condemning current practices afterwards. Scott said that independent doctors should make the decisions, while Shearer pointed out this was a ‘matter of life or death.’ Concussion substitutions have been called for, with Luis’s boss, Mikel Arteta, the latest to join that argument. This happens in rugby already, but it’s worth noting that what takes place with a head injury goes well beyond the match day itself.

Another former rugby player, Adam Hughes, was forced to retire at the age of 28 after a brain injury and believes that although things have improved, the protocols earlier in his career were ‘crazy’. He said “there were times where I suffered concussions and I was always playing again a few days later….these days you wouldn’t dare play for another few weeks at least with all the tests involved. But at the same time you don’t know what you don’t know.”

But what do we know now? Quite a bit actually.

Jeff Astle has played a huge role in this. His untimely death and the eighteen years that have followed it have been full of mis-steps and broken promises but it has compelled football, and sport, in this country to confront the dangers and take them seriously.

After starting his career at Notts County (as Tommy Lawton’s understudy), he signed for West Brom for £25,000 and became a revered and traditional centre-forward who many defenders described as the best they had faced. His winning goal in the cup final was in 1968 (v Everton) and his World Cup was in Mexico two years later, when he won the last of his caps in a match that included a glaring miss against eventual winners, Brazil. He only played five times for England and was unlucky that the era included so many world class strikers such as Greaves, Hunt and of course, Geoff Hurst. Had the World Cup fallen in ’68 instead of two years either side, he might well have been the one leading the line.

I have some – admittedly quite tenuous – links to Jeff Astle. I live in Nottingham now, and have family in Eastwood where he was born, while I myself was born in West Bromwich, where Astle played out the rest of his career as the darling of the ‘Brummie Road’. His brain also spent a great deal of time in Queens Medical Centre, a couple of miles from my house.

The autopsy on it revealed what was eventually described to the family as CTE (Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy); a condition caused by repeated head traumas and not new. It’s been around for a 100 years and is also called, amongst other things, ‘boxer’s brain.’

Astle had one of the worst cases seen in the UK. Professional athletes are especially vulnerable and further studies have shown that footballers are three and a half times more likely than those that don’t play to suffer from it. Centre forwards are at the greatest risk; mainly because of the likelihood of heading the ball far more than other players, or as Jimenez found, being involved in a collision with an opposing centre-half (themselves another endangered species).

In the US, the dangers have been known for a while as head traumas are commonplace in the NFL and NHL, with many sportsmen affected. And it is mainly men. Women suffer too, but the numbers and research is are on a smaller scale and so not as much is known; although it has been found that many females suffer the same injuries from domestic abuse – a separate and very chilling subject in its own right – rather than sport.

This article isn’t trying to get published in the Lancet, so I’ve skipped the medical aspects other than to give CTE its full name, but there is a lot of research out there.

You just have to know where – and want – to find it.

Some of the 1999 US women’s world-cup winning squad have suffered concussions and at least one has donated their brain to science (upon their death) so that the studies can continue. As the learning grows, more is known about the repercussions of having constant bashes to the head for a sustained time. They have shown that just one season in the NFL can result in a player having brain damage, and in just one game, a player can get around 50 blows to the head. See the film Concussion, with Will Smith, for more information on this and CTE.

Jeff Astle wasn’t aware of it. He likened heading an old style football, made heavier in rain, to ‘heading a bag of bricks’. Another – this time very tenuous – link I have with him was that I too played centre-forward and headed a lot of footballs, although not quite as heavy as the ones in the 60s and 70s or with the same regularity as he was a professional. It was, however, my biggest strength and I loved it.

But I now also understand a little more about the unseen dangers that he faced.

I just about recall one game where I headed the defender’s skull as well as the ball and blood was spurting out in all directions. Did anyone call an ambulance? Did anyone suggest I come off the field immediately? No, and least of all me. I told the physio to put as much Vaseline as required to stop the blood then put a bandage on it  – ASAP – as the game was ongoing. The first thing I did when getting back on the pitch was to head the ball, and I scored with a header later in the game. Not until late that night did severe headaches start and for days afterwards they plagued my every move. But it didn’t stop me going to training or playing the next weekend. That was the way it was.

What I also know, as anyone who has played centre-forward or centre-half will, is that heading a football that comes down from a goalkeeper’s high kick is not for the faint-hearted. The ball has travelled a long distance and is coming at you at tremendous speed. Do you think about it? No.

Astle did this every day in training. A lot. One of the West Brom routines after their fitness drills was to practice putting corners and free-kicks onto the King’s head. The damage, we now know, is incurable and irreversible, but their centre-forward was their major weapon; he just had no idea that he was inadvertently turning the weapon on himself.

The route from Astle’s death to where we are hasn’t been an easy one. Like in the US, when CTE was first identified in an NFL player who had died at the age of 45, the sport wasn’t that keen to learn too much more. Questions about it were shut down faster than Nottingham’s Christmas Market.

Setting up the Jeff Astle Foundation, his family understandably wanted answers in 2002, but an initial ten-year study on the links between football and dementia did not happen despite the FA and PFA promising it would. Jeff’s wife, Lorraine, said they ‘didn’t have a brush big enough’ if they hoped to sweep it under the carpet.

The conclusion, that his death was ‘industrial disease’; the result of heading heavy leather footballs, sent shock waves through the game.

The impact to the family was devastating throughout. Just listen to Lorriane, or his daughter Dawn, talk about the final years of Jeff’s life or his eventual death from asphyxiation (choking to death) at a family meal. Or listen to the scene in a recording of the play that was made about Jeff called ‘For the love of the game’ when the actress playing Lorraine has to tell a young Dawn – who idolised her father – that there was nothing the doctors could do for him.

But the campaign, and the increasing number of new cases of dementia amongst footballers, as well as the moves in other sports is beginning to change attitudes. Just maybe not quickly enough.

Players are still running around in blood-soaked bandages and youngsters are heading the ball a lot in junior games, when their brains are still at a formative stage of development. Heading in training was stopped in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland in February this year.

Today, a number of the England World Cup squad of 1966 have or are suffering from dementia. Sir Bobby Charlton is the fifth and latest confirmed case. Current manager, Gareth Southgate, has publicly said he has concerns for his own health. The problem isn’t confined to the past either – when the ball was so much heavier – but is relevant now as the modern, lighter ball travels much faster and is kicked much harder.

No one – least of all the Astle family – want to ruin football or take heading out of the game. No one wants to fundamentally change the way rugby is played either. But the science, as well as the clear consequences, are being laid bare.

It is possible to have the spectacle and protect the people in the sport. Formula 1 has made itself incredibly safer after a period in the last century where it lost an average of two drivers per season in fatal crashes. Yet the race on Sunday gone was as thrilling as ever, without as much risk to life.

It’s time to make the research and science lead the way. There is more than enough collective and individual wisdom and if we can invent technology to see if the ball crosses the goal-line, and to find out if an armpit is offside, then we can surely lessen the number of headers professional players do in training, and we can also ensure they leave the field for good after head injuries.

If we don’t, then this growing problem is only going to get worse. There will be thousands of players – and kids –  taking part now who go onto suffer the effects, including dementia and CTE, in later life.

Let’s not wait until they’ve died – or their lives are wrecked – before we take the proper cause of action.

Those with fully functioning brains in the sporting bodies need to start using them, and put heads together for the right reasons.

Life or death?

Nope. It’s much more important than that.

words Darren Young, D3D4 columnist