Two former Premier League and England international players have told of their dementia concerns over heading footballs – months after an FA-supported study ruled out dangers.
Ex-Manchester United centre-back Gary Pallister has revealed he worries about the potential harm to his health, along with fellow former Three Lions defender Steve Howey.
Pallister, 59, described suffering ‘sickening’ migraines throughout his playing career.
And Howey, whose clubs included Newcastle United and Manchester City, told of how scans show his brain has gone into cognitive decline.
Howey, 53, is now among a group of claimants pursuing legal action against the sport’s governing bodies over brain injuries they allegedly suffered during their playing days.
Researchers on a Football Association-supported study looking at the impact of head injuries on former footballers reported their initial findings in March this year.
The Health and Ageing Data in the Game of Football (HEADING) has been assessing the link between exposure to heading a football, other impacts to the head, and concussions with cognitive function among 199 ex-male professionals in England aged over 50.
In their first reported findings, the researchers said: ‘This study generally does not support an association between exposure to heading a football and poorer cognitive function among former male professional players.
Former England and Manchester United centre-back Gary Pallister has told of his health concerns about the risks of heading footballs
Fellow ex-Three Lions defender Steve Howey, whose clubs included Newcastle United and Manchester City, has revealed scans show his brain has gone into cognitive decline
Pallister is pictured in his playing days for Manchester United, challenging for the ball alongside Newcastle United’s Alan Shearer in April 1998
‘An association between the number of concussions sustained and poorer cognitive function was present, although the effect size is relatively small.’
Yet neurological scientists have also given differing opinions, while campaigners on behalf of former footballers who have suffered with dementia are pushing for more action.
Former England internationals Sir Bobby Charlton, his brother Jack, Nobby Stiles and Jeff Astle were all diagnosed with forms of dementia before their deaths.
Astle died in 2002 aged 59 with early-onset dementia. A coroner recorded his cause of death as industrial disease owing to the repeated heading of a ball and his daughter Dawn Astle has since been campaigning for more research into the risks.
In 2020, the family of 1966 World Cup winner Stiles told Mail Sport his brain had been severely damaged by his on-field career after he had suffered from dementia.
His brain was donated for analysis to a study led by Dr Willie Stewart, who led research which in 2019 reported that ex-footballers were three-and-a-half times more likely to die of neurodegenerative disease than age-matched members of the population.
Now Pallister and Howey have gone public with their concerns, ahead of a new study on the subject expected later today from the FIELD study at the University of Glasgow.
Pallister, who won 22 caps for England, told the BBC: ‘That worry and fear is always there – I think it is for a lot of players.’
England World Cup hero Stiles (above) suffered with dementia before his death in 2020
He described how he experienced tingling along his arms as well as headaches which blurred his vison from the age of 17 onwards.
Four-time Premier League winner Pallister said: ‘I would probably get three to four migraines a year, and they were quite debilitating, you know – vision, speech, the tingling and the violent headaches.
‘It would be like that for hours, until eventually I would throw up, and that would be the start of the release of the pain.
‘You kind of wondered, being a centre-half and having to head lots of footballs, whether that was anything to do with the cause of it.’
He said of his current condition: ‘I think at this moment I’m OK, I can do my sudokus, try to do a little bit of brain training.
‘But it is enough to know what I did go through with the migraines and the concussions and being knocked out, that the potential is there for me to have brain damage.’
Howey, who played four times for England, disclosed how he now struggles to get words out and can fail to remember what was said just 10 minutes beforehand.
He told the BBC: ‘There would be times you’d head it and it would immediately go black, that’s from a shot where it’s coming at pace. You’d have that “Where am I?” feeling and then realise very quickly that this is where I am. And then you just got on with it.
Three Lions legends Jack Charlton (left) and Sir Bobby Charlton (right) also died of dementia
‘It’s only when you hear the different tragic stories of some of the ex-players, you kind of think that, “Wow, you know this, this could happen to me”.’
Both Howey and Pallister are friends with relatives of ex-Middlesbrough defender Bill Gates, who died aged 79 last year after suffering from the degenerative brain disease CTE, chronic traumatic encephalopathy.
His widow is Judith Gates, who set up the campaign group Head Safe Football and has written to Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy calling for heading the ball to be identified as a national health issue.
Another former Manchester United centre-back, ex-France international Raphael Varane, told in April this year about fears for his long-term health due to suspected concussions he suffered during his career.
In an interview with L’Equipe, Varane admitted to playing on several occasions with symptoms of a brain injury, adding: ‘I know I have damaged my body.’
The earlier HEADING study was set up in 2021 and was one of two to get FA support, though while English football’s governing body encouraged ex-players to sign up it did not run the research nor support it financially.
At the time, the FA said it formed part of their ‘ongoing commitment to explore and invest in further research’ surrounding the impact of head injuries on former players.
In August this year, Nobby Stiles’ son John Stiles relaunched his campaign for justice and support for ex-footballers suffering with the effects of neurodegenerative diseases as a result of their playing days.
He leads the Football Families for Justice group which is calling on the Football Association, the Professional Footballers’ Association and other industry bodies ‘to act with urgency in allocating a small proportion of its massive wealth to address the tragedy of dementia and other neurodegenerative diseases suffered by so many ex-professionals’.
Research has suggested footballers are four to five times more likely to suffer neurodegenerative diseases such as dementia, Alzheimer’s, motor neurone disease and Parkinson’s compared to the national average.
Mail Sport’s Chris Sutton, a former England striker, is among the campaign’s supporters, saying earlier this year: ‘Football’s authorities have a dreadful habit of kicking the can down the road on this.
”Families are having to sell their homes to look after their loved ones. It’s absolutely scandalous. Nobody should be doing that with the money in the game.’
