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I was a professional footballer for 20 years. | 0:00:03 | 0:00:06 | |
Shearer! | 0:00:06 | 0:00:07 | |
I was taught to head a football | 0:00:09 | 0:00:11 | |
and practised sometimes over 100 times a day in training. | 0:00:11 | 0:00:16 | |
Alan Shearer, who else? | 0:00:16 | 0:00:18 | |
Never, ever did I think heading footballs could be dangerous for me. | 0:00:19 | 0:00:23 | |
New research, which points to risks for professional footballers... | 0:00:23 | 0:00:27 | |
Findings will fuel concerns that players' brains are being permanently damaged. | 0:00:27 | 0:00:30 | |
Three of the surviving members of | 0:00:30 | 0:00:32 | |
England's 1966 World Cup-winning team suffering from dementia... | 0:00:32 | 0:00:36 | |
I know ex-footballers that have had this. | 0:00:36 | 0:00:40 | |
As a footballer, you don't expect to die at 59 of brain damage. | 0:00:40 | 0:00:43 | |
Is there a link because you head a football? | 0:00:43 | 0:00:46 | |
It's a disgrace. How they could cover it up. | 0:00:46 | 0:00:49 | |
I want to find out, I want to learn. | 0:00:49 | 0:00:50 | |
Work, work, work, work, work! Keep pushing! | 0:00:50 | 0:00:52 | |
I'm not sure how I'll feel. | 0:00:52 | 0:00:54 | |
I'll be very nervous. | 0:00:54 | 0:00:55 | |
Each time the ball's coming in contact with the head, | 0:00:55 | 0:00:58 | |
there's just that little bit more damage. | 0:00:58 | 0:01:00 | |
I don't know what I'm going to find out. | 0:01:00 | 0:01:04 | |
People may be scared to find out some answers. | 0:01:04 | 0:01:07 | |
You've got 50,000 members. | 0:01:07 | 0:01:10 | |
Do you know how many of those have dementia? | 0:01:10 | 0:01:13 | |
No, we don't. | 0:01:13 | 0:01:15 | |
I'm asking the questions that should have been answered | 0:01:15 | 0:01:19 | |
many, many years ago. | 0:01:19 | 0:01:21 | |
Could the beautiful game be dangerous? | 0:01:22 | 0:01:24 | |
'I'm Alan Shearer. I've been in football all my life. | 0:01:32 | 0:01:37 | |
'I've got to say that nothing quite beats the days of being out there. | 0:01:37 | 0:01:41 | |
'That's what I always dreamed of, playing at the top, | 0:01:41 | 0:01:44 | |
'playing for my country and, above all, scoring goals. | 0:01:44 | 0:01:48 | |
CROWD ROARS | 0:01:48 | 0:01:49 | |
I scored 260 Premier League goals, a fifth of them with my head, | 0:01:50 | 0:01:55 | |
which must put me at risk if there is science behind the headlines | 0:01:55 | 0:01:58 | |
about dementia and football. | 0:01:58 | 0:01:59 | |
And if there is scientific proof | 0:02:01 | 0:02:03 | |
should I be talking about the game I love in the way I do? | 0:02:03 | 0:02:07 | |
He's a good, honest, centre-half, | 0:02:07 | 0:02:08 | |
and it was an excellent header, and won the game. | 0:02:08 | 0:02:11 | |
'For every goal I scored with a header in a game, | 0:02:12 | 0:02:15 | |
'I must have practised it 1,000 times in training. | 0:02:15 | 0:02:18 | |
'Just like Jeff Astle did. | 0:02:18 | 0:02:21 | |
'He was good enough to play up front for England, | 0:02:21 | 0:02:23 | |
'but he was best loved at West Bromwich Albion.' | 0:02:23 | 0:02:25 | |
-COMMENTATOR: -Astle! He scores! | 0:02:25 | 0:02:27 | |
Jeff Astle has achieved a record. | 0:02:28 | 0:02:31 | |
He's scored in every round of the FA Cup. | 0:02:31 | 0:02:33 | |
He was a great header of the ball, and scored 174 goals. | 0:02:35 | 0:02:38 | |
The Baggies fans called him "The King". | 0:02:40 | 0:02:42 | |
-Hello, Jeff. -Hello, David. | 0:02:45 | 0:02:46 | |
CHEERING | 0:02:46 | 0:02:48 | |
# Back home, they'll be thinking about us when we are far away | 0:02:49 | 0:02:55 | |
# Back home... # | 0:02:55 | 0:02:57 | |
Jeff died in 2002, at the age of 59. | 0:02:57 | 0:03:00 | |
At his inquest, the coroner said he'd died of dementia | 0:03:00 | 0:03:03 | |
brought on by years of heading the football - | 0:03:03 | 0:03:06 | |
the first time such a connection had officially been made. | 0:03:06 | 0:03:09 | |
'So, I've come to the West Midlands to meet Jeff's daughter, Dawn.' | 0:03:10 | 0:03:14 | |
-Hello. -Hello. -Thanks very much, lovely to meet you. | 0:03:15 | 0:03:17 | |
-And you. -Thank you. -Thank you. | 0:03:17 | 0:03:19 | |
-Fabulous, eh? -Brilliant. | 0:03:19 | 0:03:21 | |
I like the way they've got the nine in the crown. | 0:03:21 | 0:03:23 | |
-Number nine, the special number nine. -Yeah. | 0:03:23 | 0:03:26 | |
So, tell us about your dad, | 0:03:27 | 0:03:29 | |
when you first noticed something wasn't quite right. | 0:03:29 | 0:03:33 | |
Well, he was nearly 55, and my son was born, | 0:03:33 | 0:03:38 | |
and he couldn't remember his name, and he kept saying, | 0:03:38 | 0:03:41 | |
"What's his name again?" | 0:03:41 | 0:03:43 | |
And I said, "It's Matthew, Dad." | 0:03:43 | 0:03:45 | |
And it's not like an unusual name or anything. | 0:03:45 | 0:03:48 | |
And I just kept thinking, "Why can't you remember his name?" | 0:03:48 | 0:03:50 | |
He suddenly came out one day and said, "Is my mum still alive?" | 0:03:50 | 0:03:55 | |
And I thought, | 0:03:55 | 0:03:56 | |
she's been dead, like, 17, 18 years, | 0:03:56 | 0:03:59 | |
and I thought, "What's he keep saying these weird things for?" | 0:03:59 | 0:04:02 | |
And it was really hard for Mum to get him to go to the doctor's | 0:04:02 | 0:04:05 | |
because, as I say, he didn't think there was anything wrong. | 0:04:05 | 0:04:08 | |
She got him to go in the end, to the doctor's. | 0:04:08 | 0:04:11 | |
All the time he was in with the doctor, | 0:04:11 | 0:04:13 | |
he was still glaring at Mum as if to say, why am I here? | 0:04:13 | 0:04:15 | |
And that's when, | 0:04:15 | 0:04:17 | |
I suppose, your life sort of changed forever, then, | 0:04:17 | 0:04:20 | |
because they said, we're really sorry, but we think | 0:04:20 | 0:04:23 | |
Jeff's got early-onset dementia. | 0:04:23 | 0:04:26 | |
Do you remember how difficult were the next three or four years? | 0:04:26 | 0:04:29 | |
-Take your time. -I know. | 0:04:34 | 0:04:36 | |
It was... | 0:04:40 | 0:04:42 | |
..the most... | 0:04:43 | 0:04:44 | |
..devastating... | 0:04:44 | 0:04:46 | |
..brutal thing I've ever seen in my life. | 0:04:46 | 0:04:49 | |
-It used to kill me to go and see him. -Mm. | 0:04:49 | 0:04:52 | |
He'd try and get out of a moving car. | 0:04:52 | 0:04:54 | |
You were a nervous wreck around him. | 0:04:54 | 0:04:56 | |
Erm... He would eat things you're not supposed to eat. | 0:04:56 | 0:04:59 | |
He'd just go into the fridge and get a big scoop of butter | 0:04:59 | 0:05:01 | |
in the middle of his hand, and put it in his mouth. | 0:05:01 | 0:05:04 | |
And my dad had impeccable table manners. Impeccable table manners. | 0:05:04 | 0:05:09 | |
It was devastating to see him just completely...change. | 0:05:09 | 0:05:14 | |
He looked like Dad in the first few years. | 0:05:14 | 0:05:17 | |
But when the disease really...took a hold on him... | 0:05:17 | 0:05:21 | |
..the difference in how he looked... | 0:05:23 | 0:05:25 | |
Um... He was 59 when he died, and he looked 159. | 0:05:25 | 0:05:29 | |
And it just killed us. | 0:05:30 | 0:05:31 | |
At the inquest today, the coroner heard from medical experts | 0:05:32 | 0:05:35 | |
that the damage to Mr Astle's brain | 0:05:35 | 0:05:37 | |
was the result of repeated minor trauma, | 0:05:37 | 0:05:41 | |
probably caused by heading a heavy football. | 0:05:41 | 0:05:45 | |
The pathologist who examined Dad's brain described how badly damaged it was. | 0:05:45 | 0:05:49 | |
There was trauma right the way through it. | 0:05:49 | 0:05:51 | |
And that's when he said it was the repeated heading of footballs that | 0:05:51 | 0:05:54 | |
he believed had caused all this trauma over a period of years. | 0:05:54 | 0:05:59 | |
The ruling was "industrial disease", and so, in other words, | 0:05:59 | 0:06:01 | |
Dad's job had killed him. And it was a landmark decision. | 0:06:01 | 0:06:06 | |
And it wasn't until 2014, when his brain was re-examined, | 0:06:06 | 0:06:08 | |
and it was found that he didn't have Alzheimer's, he had CTE, | 0:06:08 | 0:06:13 | |
or boxer's brain, that's when we wanted to know why, you know. | 0:06:13 | 0:06:18 | |
My dad was a footballer. How did he end up with boxer's brain? | 0:06:18 | 0:06:22 | |
So, you're absolutely convinced that heading a football definitely had | 0:06:22 | 0:06:26 | |
-something to do... -Definitely. | 0:06:26 | 0:06:29 | |
-..with your... -Absolutely, definitely. | 0:06:29 | 0:06:31 | |
'Before I spoke with Dawn, I was aware of the Jeff Astle situation,' | 0:06:35 | 0:06:40 | |
but it's only now I realise that Dawn and her family have been through sheer hell. | 0:06:41 | 0:06:48 | |
Now, I've got to try and understand this a lot more | 0:06:48 | 0:06:52 | |
because Dawn was mentioning boxer's brain, CTE, dementia. | 0:06:52 | 0:06:57 | |
How on earth this can be involved or linked in any way with football, | 0:06:57 | 0:07:02 | |
or heading a football? | 0:07:02 | 0:07:05 | |
Jeff's is not an isolated case. | 0:07:06 | 0:07:09 | |
Studies by University College London have revealed CTE in four more | 0:07:09 | 0:07:13 | |
footballers' brains. | 0:07:13 | 0:07:16 | |
'I need answers, so I'm travelling to Glasgow | 0:07:16 | 0:07:18 | |
'to meet Dr Willie Stewart, | 0:07:18 | 0:07:20 | |
'the pathologist who found the disease in Jeff Astle's brain.' | 0:07:20 | 0:07:23 | |
Can you just explain dementia, CTE? | 0:07:25 | 0:07:29 | |
Great questions. | 0:07:29 | 0:07:31 | |
So, dementia is where you've got a loss of normal brain function. | 0:07:31 | 0:07:35 | |
Your memory's affected, sometimes your personality's affected, | 0:07:35 | 0:07:38 | |
and it can progress to other systems affected as well. | 0:07:38 | 0:07:40 | |
-Right. -It's a very loose term. | 0:07:40 | 0:07:41 | |
There's lots and lots of different types of dementia. | 0:07:41 | 0:07:44 | |
People are really familiar with Alzheimer's disease. | 0:07:44 | 0:07:47 | |
-Yeah. -But there are many other types of dementia, too. | 0:07:47 | 0:07:50 | |
And this one that we are particularly interested in | 0:07:50 | 0:07:54 | |
is chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE - much easier to say. | 0:07:54 | 0:07:58 | |
And that's been around for an awful long time. | 0:07:58 | 0:08:01 | |
We used to recognise it and see it fairly regularly in former boxers. | 0:08:01 | 0:08:06 | |
But, actually, it could be a footballer's brain, it could be a rugby player's brain. | 0:08:06 | 0:08:09 | |
It was a realisation that you didn't have to be a boxer to get this pathology, | 0:08:09 | 0:08:12 | |
that, actually, it was exposure to brain injury and impacts that was the problem. | 0:08:12 | 0:08:16 | |
-Is that what you found in Jeff Astle's brain? -Yeah. | 0:08:16 | 0:08:18 | |
'CTE is a form of dementia that can be found only after death. | 0:08:21 | 0:08:26 | |
'So, I'm going to be looking at samples of brains | 0:08:26 | 0:08:29 | |
'that have been removed.' | 0:08:29 | 0:08:31 | |
I hope I'm not squeamish. | 0:08:31 | 0:08:32 | |
Mind your step. Thank you. | 0:08:33 | 0:08:36 | |
What we have here is, I've got three recent cases, | 0:08:37 | 0:08:41 | |
we're looking at about... | 0:08:41 | 0:08:43 | |
-I'm just frowning, that's all. -Perplexed! | 0:08:43 | 0:08:46 | |
..three recent cases of dementia. | 0:08:46 | 0:08:50 | |
And they've all been dissected, so they're in bits. | 0:08:50 | 0:08:53 | |
But just to let you see what we're dealing with. | 0:08:53 | 0:08:55 | |
That is somebody who has dementia who wasn't a sports person. | 0:08:57 | 0:09:05 | |
This is football. This is rugby. | 0:09:05 | 0:09:06 | |
The important thing here is that, even when they've got dementia, | 0:09:06 | 0:09:09 | |
there are very limited clues we have | 0:09:09 | 0:09:11 | |
that allow us to say what kind of dementia they might have had. | 0:09:11 | 0:09:16 | |
They're all a bit shrunken. | 0:09:16 | 0:09:17 | |
They all show signs of damage in different ways. | 0:09:17 | 0:09:22 | |
When we're talking about CTE or head injury-specific dementia, | 0:09:22 | 0:09:26 | |
to be more accurate, physically, there isn't that much to see at all. | 0:09:26 | 0:09:30 | |
It's all down a microscope. | 0:09:30 | 0:09:32 | |
'It's not just my untrained eye. | 0:09:33 | 0:09:35 | |
'We have to give this grey matter some colour, literally, | 0:09:35 | 0:09:38 | |
'reveal the damage with dye.' | 0:09:38 | 0:09:40 | |
We use special techniques to show up proteins in the brain. | 0:09:42 | 0:09:46 | |
The stain we are using to show this abnormal protein up stains things brown. | 0:09:46 | 0:09:50 | |
Protein appearing in the brain is abnormal, | 0:09:50 | 0:09:54 | |
and is associated with people with dementia | 0:09:54 | 0:09:56 | |
in that somebody who has no dementia has none of this protein. | 0:09:56 | 0:09:59 | |
You see that hole in the middle? | 0:09:59 | 0:10:01 | |
-Yeah, that clear hole? -Yeah, that clear hole is a blood vessel. | 0:10:01 | 0:10:04 | |
How we can spot it as CTE is that, | 0:10:04 | 0:10:07 | |
the way that the protein clusters around blood vessels like that, | 0:10:07 | 0:10:12 | |
it's so badly damaged that the structure of the brain has begun to disintegrate on it. | 0:10:12 | 0:10:18 | |
So, you think that is down to him playing football? | 0:10:18 | 0:10:21 | |
Ah. Well. | 0:10:21 | 0:10:22 | |
-It's... -The only thing we can say that links the cases that we've been seeing is | 0:10:22 | 0:10:27 | |
exposure to brain injury. | 0:10:27 | 0:10:29 | |
What we can't do is say exactly which part of the activity it was. | 0:10:29 | 0:10:33 | |
-Yeah. -The question people ask is, is it the heading? We can't say that. | 0:10:33 | 0:10:37 | |
Because how would you that it's not because he's heading the back of someone's head | 0:10:37 | 0:10:41 | |
or he had three or four elbows during a game, or...? | 0:10:41 | 0:10:43 | |
Which is why I'm always very cautious when people say, | 0:10:43 | 0:10:46 | |
you know, try to say it's the heading in football, | 0:10:46 | 0:10:49 | |
or it's the scrum in rugby, or... | 0:10:49 | 0:10:52 | |
Football heading, we just don't have information on. | 0:10:52 | 0:10:54 | |
We need to understand better what happens there, | 0:10:54 | 0:10:57 | |
-to be able to work out what might be happening later on. -OK. | 0:10:57 | 0:11:01 | |
It's not that reassuring because, if the greater danger comes from | 0:11:01 | 0:11:05 | |
more obvious shocks to the head, well, | 0:11:05 | 0:11:08 | |
I may qualify on that score. | 0:11:08 | 0:11:10 | |
It would be fair to say I was a pretty robust player who gave a few knocks and took a few. | 0:11:11 | 0:11:16 | |
Even so, what I did was surely never like this. | 0:11:16 | 0:11:22 | |
To say this leads to CTE or especially this, | 0:11:22 | 0:11:25 | |
doesn't come as any sort of surprise. | 0:11:25 | 0:11:29 | |
But can CTE be caused by something as painless as heading? | 0:11:29 | 0:11:32 | |
I need to find out more about precisely what happens inside a head | 0:11:34 | 0:11:38 | |
that meets a football. | 0:11:38 | 0:11:39 | |
Neuroscientist Dr Michael Grey has a special interest in sport concussion | 0:11:41 | 0:11:46 | |
assessment and rehabilitation. | 0:11:46 | 0:11:49 | |
To understand this, we have to start at the beginning. | 0:11:51 | 0:11:53 | |
Football is the only sport where the head is used as an instrument to hit | 0:11:53 | 0:11:57 | |
the ball. | 0:11:57 | 0:11:59 | |
And so now we have to think about, what potential damage is there? | 0:11:59 | 0:12:02 | |
How is the brain actually protected? | 0:12:02 | 0:12:05 | |
The brain is fixed at one point here, right about where my finger is, in the brainstem here. | 0:12:05 | 0:12:09 | |
And it sits within a fluid-filled bag, | 0:12:09 | 0:12:12 | |
and that bag is then inside a hard skull. | 0:12:12 | 0:12:16 | |
When the ball comes in contact with the head, | 0:12:16 | 0:12:18 | |
what we frequently see in illustrations | 0:12:18 | 0:12:20 | |
is this little red bit here, | 0:12:20 | 0:12:22 | |
which would suggest that the damage is all occurring down here. | 0:12:22 | 0:12:25 | |
And, in fact, that's wrong. | 0:12:25 | 0:12:27 | |
What we should pay attention to is the wobbling that goes on in the brain. | 0:12:27 | 0:12:32 | |
Another way to look at this is with this little jelly mould here. | 0:12:32 | 0:12:35 | |
So, imagine this jelly mould here is a brain. | 0:12:35 | 0:12:38 | |
And if I tap the side of the plate, like this, | 0:12:38 | 0:12:40 | |
you can see the brain is wobbling. | 0:12:40 | 0:12:42 | |
And that's effectively what's happening when the ball hits the head. | 0:12:42 | 0:12:47 | |
What's happening inside the brain is that the nerves are getting stretched quite rapidly, | 0:12:47 | 0:12:52 | |
and that's causing some structural damage to the nerves. | 0:12:52 | 0:12:56 | |
The question then is, is this dangerous? | 0:12:57 | 0:13:00 | |
We can get concussions from a single heading of the ball, | 0:13:00 | 0:13:03 | |
if the force is strong enough, | 0:13:03 | 0:13:06 | |
and this will be seen in symptoms such as seeing stars, | 0:13:06 | 0:13:09 | |
such as getting a headache after heading the ball. | 0:13:09 | 0:13:13 | |
That will lead to concussion, and then we should be taking players off the pitch. | 0:13:13 | 0:13:16 | |
That's different than the sub-concussive injury which is still creating some damage, | 0:13:16 | 0:13:21 | |
but we don't actually know that anything has happened. | 0:13:21 | 0:13:26 | |
So we don't see the stars, we don't get the headache, | 0:13:26 | 0:13:29 | |
everything feels fine. | 0:13:29 | 0:13:31 | |
Each and every time we head the ball and we get this little wobbling, | 0:13:31 | 0:13:34 | |
if there is a little bit of damage, and we don't let the brain recover, | 0:13:34 | 0:13:37 | |
and we just keep back out there doing it again and again and again, | 0:13:37 | 0:13:39 | |
that's probably not good for the brain. | 0:13:39 | 0:13:42 | |
There is clearly much more work to be done. | 0:13:42 | 0:13:46 | |
Tiny changes within the brain are hard to detect. | 0:13:46 | 0:13:49 | |
How extensive might this sub-concussive damage be? | 0:13:49 | 0:13:54 | |
What's easier to measure is the overall scale of the problem. | 0:13:54 | 0:13:58 | |
There's 850,000 people in our country | 0:13:58 | 0:14:00 | |
that are suffering from dementia. | 0:14:00 | 0:14:05 | |
And there are a lot of footballers in those numbers. | 0:14:05 | 0:14:08 | |
But the reality is, and the sad thing, we don't know how many. | 0:14:08 | 0:14:13 | |
And that can't be right. | 0:14:13 | 0:14:14 | |
I'm going to meet one of them. | 0:14:15 | 0:14:17 | |
Matt Tees played professional football in the '60s and '70s | 0:14:17 | 0:14:20 | |
in Scotland and England. His strong point was heading the ball. | 0:14:20 | 0:14:26 | |
Matt now suffers from dementia. | 0:14:26 | 0:14:31 | |
-Hello. -Hello. How are you? -Fine. -I'm just admiring your gardens. | 0:14:31 | 0:14:34 | |
-Oh, thank you. -They're beautiful. Lovely to meet you. How are you? | 0:14:34 | 0:14:37 | |
May and Matt, yes? | 0:14:37 | 0:14:40 | |
-How are you? -I'm all right, yeah. | 0:14:40 | 0:14:41 | |
I've just had six pins and a plate put in my wrist because I fell off my cycle. | 0:14:41 | 0:14:45 | |
-Oh, crikey. -You've just had your golden wedding anniversary? | 0:14:45 | 0:14:48 | |
-Yeah, yeah. -That's 50, is it? | 0:14:48 | 0:14:49 | |
-50 years, yes, yes. -Awesome. | 0:14:49 | 0:14:51 | |
-50 years, eh, Matt? -Do I look that old?! | 0:14:51 | 0:14:53 | |
She's put up with you for 50 years, has she? | 0:14:53 | 0:14:56 | |
Oh, thank you! | 0:14:56 | 0:14:57 | |
Ha-ha. | 0:14:57 | 0:15:00 | |
-So, life's good, life's hard? -Yes, life's very, very... | 0:15:00 | 0:15:02 | |
-Good days and bad days. -Yes, I bet, yeah. | 0:15:02 | 0:15:05 | |
-We take them as they come. -Yeah. | 0:15:05 | 0:15:07 | |
We have a set routine that we must follow. | 0:15:07 | 0:15:10 | |
Like, what day is it? | 0:15:10 | 0:15:12 | |
Well, you can see up there, the day's put up every day. | 0:15:12 | 0:15:15 | |
Matt's quiet. He doesn't talk. | 0:15:15 | 0:15:18 | |
He now doesn't know that this is his house. | 0:15:18 | 0:15:21 | |
-That must be so difficult for you. -That's heartbreaking for me, Alan. | 0:15:21 | 0:15:25 | |
I think I've learned to be very strong because I've had to be. | 0:15:25 | 0:15:28 | |
And it's one of the few times I could have cried. | 0:15:28 | 0:15:31 | |
We're into the final stages which could be | 0:15:33 | 0:15:36 | |
two years, ten years, nobody knows. | 0:15:36 | 0:15:40 | |
You say that with ease, as in, you've totally accepted. | 0:15:40 | 0:15:44 | |
-I have to. -Yeah. | 0:15:44 | 0:15:46 | |
We have to live with that, Alan, don't we? | 0:15:46 | 0:15:48 | |
And it is our way of life. | 0:15:48 | 0:15:51 | |
It is Tees! | 0:15:59 | 0:16:02 | |
So, tell me who you used to play for. | 0:16:02 | 0:16:04 | |
-I played with Luton. -Luton, yeah. | 0:16:04 | 0:16:06 | |
And then I left Luton, and I went to... | 0:16:06 | 0:16:12 | |
-What's that one? -You played in Scotland. | 0:16:13 | 0:16:15 | |
-Ah, yes. -Then you came down to Grimsby. | 0:16:15 | 0:16:17 | |
Yeah. | 0:16:17 | 0:16:19 | |
And then you went to London, to Charlton, Charlton Athletic. | 0:16:19 | 0:16:22 | |
-Yeah, yeah. -Oh, aye. | 0:16:22 | 0:16:23 | |
Centre-half or centre forward? | 0:16:23 | 0:16:24 | |
-Centre forward. -Goal-scorer. | 0:16:24 | 0:16:27 | |
Oh, yeah. | 0:16:27 | 0:16:29 | |
That is a typical photograph of Matt, up there, and heading that ball. | 0:16:30 | 0:16:33 | |
That's some header. | 0:16:33 | 0:16:35 | |
And there's the happy goal-scorer, Matt Tees. | 0:16:38 | 0:16:42 | |
Do you...think there is a link to football? | 0:16:42 | 0:16:45 | |
I think there has to be. | 0:16:45 | 0:16:47 | |
-I've got no doubt about it, Alan. -There has to be. | 0:16:47 | 0:16:49 | |
Without trying hard, I can name about eight people | 0:16:49 | 0:16:51 | |
Matt's played football, in this area, with, | 0:16:51 | 0:16:54 | |
that's had dementia or Alzheimer's. | 0:16:54 | 0:16:56 | |
-Yep. -Wow. | 0:16:56 | 0:16:58 | |
Yeah. So, that speaks volumes, in my opinion. | 0:16:59 | 0:17:03 | |
My grandsons, | 0:17:03 | 0:17:05 | |
two of them are really good footballers. | 0:17:05 | 0:17:07 | |
And I went to watch Matt, the one in the blue shirt up there. | 0:17:07 | 0:17:12 | |
Honestly, I wanted... I felt sick. | 0:17:12 | 0:17:14 | |
Really? That bad? | 0:17:14 | 0:17:16 | |
He plays sweeper, and he's jumping up, heading them like this. | 0:17:16 | 0:17:20 | |
And I'm just, "Oh!" And my heart was going like this. | 0:17:20 | 0:17:23 | |
I couldn't believe my reaction. | 0:17:23 | 0:17:25 | |
Because I know what I know now. | 0:17:25 | 0:17:29 | |
-Come on in, guys, hello. Nice to meet you. -This is Joe. | 0:17:29 | 0:17:31 | |
Nice to meet you, how are you? | 0:17:31 | 0:17:33 | |
-Hello. -Hello, nice to meet you. | 0:17:33 | 0:17:35 | |
Left hand, I'm afraid. Hi, guys, how are you? | 0:17:35 | 0:17:39 | |
-You're the centre-half, and you're the right-back? -Yeah. | 0:17:39 | 0:17:42 | |
-So you both head the ball? -Yeah. | 0:17:42 | 0:17:45 | |
-Do you take after your grandad and head the ball? -Yes. Supposedly. | 0:17:45 | 0:17:47 | |
Yeah, do you? | 0:17:47 | 0:17:49 | |
They never saw me when I was at my best. | 0:17:49 | 0:17:52 | |
Does it worry you boys, about heading the ball? | 0:17:52 | 0:17:54 | |
No. Um... | 0:17:54 | 0:17:56 | |
Do you think about it? | 0:17:56 | 0:17:57 | |
It wouldn't, it doesn't, I don't really think about it. | 0:17:57 | 0:18:00 | |
But, if there is a link... | 0:18:00 | 0:18:03 | |
Like, I wouldn't stop doing it. | 0:18:03 | 0:18:06 | |
And has Grandma told you what she thinks of football and heading, etc? | 0:18:06 | 0:18:11 | |
Yeah, we've spoken about it before. | 0:18:11 | 0:18:13 | |
-Does that worry you? -Um, a little bit. | 0:18:13 | 0:18:16 | |
But, obviously, I don't think... | 0:18:16 | 0:18:17 | |
It has changed a bit because, obviously, | 0:18:17 | 0:18:20 | |
when Grandpa used to do it, | 0:18:20 | 0:18:22 | |
if it was wet, the leather balls, they'd have been heavier. | 0:18:22 | 0:18:26 | |
-Whereas, nowadays, they're quite light. -Yeah. | 0:18:26 | 0:18:29 | |
Do you think our authorities | 0:18:31 | 0:18:33 | |
would be running away from this problem? | 0:18:33 | 0:18:38 | |
I've got two sons and three grandsons, and I want research. | 0:18:40 | 0:18:45 | |
I don't want my daughter-in-laws and my grandchildren's partners | 0:18:45 | 0:18:49 | |
and wives in the future to go through what we go through now. | 0:18:49 | 0:18:53 | |
-Life's quite frightening for Matt now. -Yeah. | 0:18:53 | 0:18:57 | |
What struck me about seeing the Tees family, it wasn't just Matt | 0:18:57 | 0:19:01 | |
that's suffering, it's May that has to carry everything. | 0:19:01 | 0:19:07 | |
And the grandkids. | 0:19:07 | 0:19:08 | |
It surprises me that they're so keen, and wanting, | 0:19:08 | 0:19:12 | |
and willing to go out and head balls, | 0:19:12 | 0:19:15 | |
despite seeing their grandad in the way he is, | 0:19:15 | 0:19:20 | |
and what their grandma has to deal with. | 0:19:20 | 0:19:24 | |
Are Matt's grandchildren putting themselves in harm's way by heading the ball? | 0:19:25 | 0:19:30 | |
I'm returning to Scotland to see if science has the answer. | 0:19:30 | 0:19:33 | |
I did science at school. I did a lot of things at school | 0:19:33 | 0:19:36 | |
but other than football, I wasn't very good at school! | 0:19:36 | 0:19:38 | |
HE CHUCKLES | 0:19:38 | 0:19:39 | |
At the University of Stirling, studies are under way | 0:19:40 | 0:19:43 | |
specific to heading a football. | 0:19:43 | 0:19:45 | |
It's ground-breaking work in the UK, | 0:19:45 | 0:19:47 | |
prompted by worries about old players. | 0:19:47 | 0:19:51 | |
We'd started getting reports of concerns of the effects of long-term | 0:19:53 | 0:19:57 | |
heading in football. | 0:19:57 | 0:19:59 | |
-Yeah. -Erm, so we decided to set up a laboratory controlled trial, | 0:19:59 | 0:20:05 | |
erm, where we mimicked the effects of heading a ball | 0:20:05 | 0:20:10 | |
in a training drill, as in a cross kick from a corner into the goal. | 0:20:10 | 0:20:16 | |
But importantly, what we did was we put together psychology | 0:20:16 | 0:20:20 | |
-and physiology to look at the effects of this impact of the ball on the head. -Yeah. | 0:20:20 | 0:20:25 | |
Until quite recently, that was difficult, to, | 0:20:25 | 0:20:28 | |
-to look almost inside the brain... -Yeah. -..at what's going on. | 0:20:28 | 0:20:30 | |
And now we have that technology from basic science, we can apply that | 0:20:30 | 0:20:35 | |
and, and really start to understand what is the direct impact. | 0:20:35 | 0:20:40 | |
My guess would be it's not so much heading | 0:20:40 | 0:20:42 | |
a football in a match, it's actually doing it in training. | 0:20:42 | 0:20:46 | |
-Heading the ball once is not going to give you brain damage. -Yeah. | 0:20:46 | 0:20:49 | |
And we're not talking about brain damage. | 0:20:49 | 0:20:51 | |
-We're talking about the brain changes... -Yeah. -.. | 0:20:51 | 0:20:54 | |
That are...short-lived but repeated over and over again, and yes, | 0:20:54 | 0:20:57 | |
we are most worried about the practice drills. | 0:20:57 | 0:21:02 | |
And how, how far, erm, have you come? | 0:21:02 | 0:21:04 | |
What results have you had? | 0:21:04 | 0:21:07 | |
The first time we tried it, erm, it was very clear, erm, | 0:21:07 | 0:21:12 | |
that there are immediate brain changes after heading the ball. | 0:21:12 | 0:21:19 | |
'The research they've been doing has focused on modern players but first, | 0:21:19 | 0:21:22 | |
'we're going to examine the leather footballs of Jeff and Matt's era.' | 0:21:22 | 0:21:28 | |
A lot of the thought is that, that the older balls were heavier, erm... | 0:21:28 | 0:21:31 | |
-Had to have been, mustn't they? -But I'd be curious to find out what you | 0:21:31 | 0:21:34 | |
think when you are heading the ball. | 0:21:34 | 0:21:36 | |
-OK. -Is that OK? -Absolutely. | 0:21:36 | 0:21:39 | |
-Right. OK, ready? -Yeah. | 0:21:39 | 0:21:40 | |
-That actually feels lighter. -Good point. | 0:21:43 | 0:21:46 | |
So when we weighed them, these, this was actually about 40g lighter | 0:21:46 | 0:21:49 | |
-than this one. -Right. | 0:21:49 | 0:21:50 | |
-But the issue with these balls were the fact, when they got wet... -Yeah. | 0:21:52 | 0:21:55 | |
..and all the stitching got soaked and everything else... | 0:21:55 | 0:21:57 | |
-Yeah. -..what we've done is actually soaked a ball in water for two hours | 0:21:57 | 0:22:01 | |
and what we'll do, we'll weigh it, so... | 0:22:01 | 0:22:04 | |
-OK. -Because we weighed it beforehand so just to see if the weight has changed. | 0:22:06 | 0:22:10 | |
So it's gained quite a bit of weight. | 0:22:13 | 0:22:15 | |
-That was 390g, we weighed it. -Right. | 0:22:15 | 0:22:18 | |
And that's now 595g. | 0:22:18 | 0:22:21 | |
So you can see there, there is an issue with, when the ball is wet, | 0:22:21 | 0:22:25 | |
it would have weighed a lot more, no question. | 0:22:25 | 0:22:27 | |
Thankfully, I didn't have to head those big, leather, brown, ugly, | 0:22:29 | 0:22:33 | |
wet balls, which were incredibly heavy when wet. | 0:22:33 | 0:22:38 | |
It seems to me the guys in the '60s and '70s got a bit of a raw deal, | 0:22:39 | 0:22:43 | |
having to head those things. | 0:22:43 | 0:22:46 | |
I'm now going to do my bit to measure what happens | 0:22:46 | 0:22:49 | |
when the ball I did play with meets my head. | 0:22:49 | 0:22:53 | |
'19 players have been tested so far. | 0:22:53 | 0:22:56 | |
'Meet number 20. | 0:22:56 | 0:22:57 | |
'What precisely will be going on inside this head of mine | 0:22:58 | 0:23:01 | |
'when it goes back to doing its old job?' | 0:23:01 | 0:23:03 | |
We're going to do a battery of tests to look at the effects of heading a football. | 0:23:03 | 0:23:08 | |
Erm, first of all, we'll be doing a cognitive, erm, test. | 0:23:08 | 0:23:13 | |
-What's a cognitive test? -A test of reaction time and of memory. | 0:23:13 | 0:23:18 | |
What type of questions? I hope they're nice and easy ones! | 0:23:18 | 0:23:21 | |
-Well, they start easy and they get more difficult. -OK. | 0:23:21 | 0:23:25 | |
Brilliant, so in the first test, you'll see six white boxes. | 0:23:25 | 0:23:28 | |
Erm, they'll open up in a random order. | 0:23:28 | 0:23:31 | |
There's going to be a pattern inside one of the boxes to start off with. | 0:23:31 | 0:23:35 | |
You have to remember where the pattern is. | 0:23:35 | 0:23:39 | |
I'll be doing these tests before my headers and again afterwards, | 0:23:40 | 0:23:44 | |
and we'll compare the results. | 0:23:44 | 0:23:47 | |
-Oh, did I get it wrong? -You must have got one wrong. -Oh. | 0:23:47 | 0:23:51 | |
-I feel like I'm back at school now. -Yeah. | 0:23:51 | 0:23:54 | |
OK, so this time, we're going to do the same thing but | 0:23:55 | 0:23:58 | |
there's going to be three patterns, so it does get progressively more... | 0:23:58 | 0:24:01 | |
Here's where it gets interesting. | 0:24:01 | 0:24:03 | |
Oh! | 0:24:05 | 0:24:06 | |
SCREEN BLEEPS | 0:24:06 | 0:24:08 | |
Got it wrong again, haven't I? | 0:24:09 | 0:24:10 | |
Wa-hey! | 0:24:13 | 0:24:15 | |
-OK, so we're onto the second test. -OK. | 0:24:15 | 0:24:17 | |
This one is a test of your spatial working memory. | 0:24:17 | 0:24:19 | |
Excellent. | 0:24:22 | 0:24:24 | |
-The next stage, we're going to be using this press pad. -OK. | 0:24:24 | 0:24:27 | |
PAD BLEEPS | 0:24:33 | 0:24:34 | |
-So am I a genius or what, then? -Yeah, I think you definitely are. | 0:24:35 | 0:24:39 | |
I thought we were going to be here all afternoon. | 0:24:39 | 0:24:42 | |
-OK, Alan, what we're going to do now is look at your balance. -OK. | 0:24:42 | 0:24:45 | |
We want to see if that changes as a result of doing the heading. | 0:24:45 | 0:24:49 | |
If you want to stand on the balance board. | 0:24:49 | 0:24:53 | |
Try and keep the circle in the centre of the screen. | 0:24:53 | 0:24:57 | |
OK, and step down. | 0:25:03 | 0:25:04 | |
Perfect. Very good. | 0:25:05 | 0:25:06 | |
So that's you done with the balance thing, so now we'll move next door. | 0:25:06 | 0:25:10 | |
What we're going to do now, a bit of a magnetic stimulation on the top of your brain... | 0:25:10 | 0:25:14 | |
-Right. -..to see how your muscle responds. | 0:25:14 | 0:25:17 | |
So, if you want to give a couple of contractions. | 0:25:17 | 0:25:20 | |
-Right, so you see that activity there? -Yes. | 0:25:24 | 0:25:26 | |
That's your brain instructing the muscle to contract, | 0:25:26 | 0:25:28 | |
so it sends electrical impulses down to the muscle. | 0:25:28 | 0:25:31 | |
So when you see these blue bits, here... | 0:25:31 | 0:25:33 | |
-Yeah. -..that's your electrical activity in the muscle. | 0:25:33 | 0:25:38 | |
And we're going to be measuring what happens | 0:25:38 | 0:25:40 | |
when we actually give a stimulus from the brain. | 0:25:40 | 0:25:44 | |
This is called transcranial magnetic stimulation. | 0:25:44 | 0:25:47 | |
It works by placing this coil over your head. | 0:25:47 | 0:25:50 | |
-So depending on where Tom stimulates... -Yeah. | 0:25:50 | 0:25:52 | |
..you'll see a twitch in a different muscle. | 0:25:52 | 0:25:56 | |
-Oh, right. We'll see a twitch, will we? -Yeah, we'll see a twitch. | 0:25:56 | 0:26:00 | |
This measure looks at how easy the signal travels | 0:26:00 | 0:26:04 | |
from your brain to the muscle. | 0:26:04 | 0:26:07 | |
And push up. | 0:26:08 | 0:26:11 | |
Halfway there. | 0:26:11 | 0:26:12 | |
MACHINE CLICKS | 0:26:14 | 0:26:18 | |
And relax. | 0:26:21 | 0:26:22 | |
-Good. How did that feel? -Fine. -OK. | 0:26:22 | 0:26:25 | |
That's the "before" tests done. | 0:26:26 | 0:26:28 | |
After I've headed the ball 20 times, we'll do the same tests again, | 0:26:28 | 0:26:32 | |
and the team will compare before and after. | 0:26:32 | 0:26:35 | |
Now, the bit in the middle. | 0:26:35 | 0:26:37 | |
This is where it gets interesting. | 0:26:38 | 0:26:39 | |
OK. Ready, and three, two, one... | 0:26:39 | 0:26:42 | |
Perfect. That's one. | 0:26:42 | 0:26:44 | |
-Good header! -That's very good. | 0:26:44 | 0:26:46 | |
See, now I'm meant to run away with my arm in the air. | 0:26:46 | 0:26:49 | |
Celebrate! | 0:26:50 | 0:26:51 | |
And three, two, one. | 0:26:53 | 0:26:55 | |
-Ah, I missed that one. -Couple more. | 0:26:56 | 0:26:58 | |
Good header! | 0:26:58 | 0:27:00 | |
-Very good. -Last one. | 0:27:00 | 0:27:01 | |
In three, two, one. Excellent. | 0:27:04 | 0:27:08 | |
-Perfect. -Right, that's us. You've successfully completed the heading protocol, well done. | 0:27:08 | 0:27:11 | |
-Cool. -We'll take the headband off you. -OK. | 0:27:11 | 0:27:15 | |
-Go straight through, eh? -Yeah, we'll go straight through. | 0:27:15 | 0:27:18 | |
-Through to the lab. -Yeah. | 0:27:18 | 0:27:20 | |
See what damage it's done. | 0:27:20 | 0:27:21 | |
HE GRUNTS | 0:27:24 | 0:27:25 | |
I'll have a red head, now. | 0:27:28 | 0:27:29 | |
My hair used to cover it when I was playing! | 0:27:29 | 0:27:32 | |
So what differences do you think you'll see, here, if any? | 0:27:32 | 0:27:37 | |
Some changes in the way your brain communicates with the muscles. | 0:27:37 | 0:27:41 | |
-Maybe the impulses take a bit longer to get down or coming up a bit smaller. -OK. | 0:27:41 | 0:27:45 | |
Good. Keep it there. Nice and steady. | 0:27:46 | 0:27:49 | |
That's really good. | 0:27:49 | 0:27:50 | |
'I can't say I enjoyed the jolts going through my skull that much. | 0:27:52 | 0:27:56 | |
'The balance test, the cognitive tests, and now we wait.' | 0:27:56 | 0:28:01 | |
-OK, we've, we've found some interesting results. -Good or bad? -Well... | 0:28:01 | 0:28:06 | |
I don't know how you found the cognitive testing. | 0:28:06 | 0:28:08 | |
The results look quite similar to | 0:28:08 | 0:28:09 | |
those that we were finding in the study itself. | 0:28:09 | 0:28:11 | |
-You did better on the eight-item portion the first time around. -Yeah. | 0:28:11 | 0:28:15 | |
-And then you did worse in that the second time around. -Yeah. | 0:28:15 | 0:28:18 | |
-We had no change in your balance. -Right. | 0:28:18 | 0:28:20 | |
If anything, a slight improvement, which we also found in the study, | 0:28:20 | 0:28:24 | |
probably slightly to do with a learning effect. | 0:28:24 | 0:28:27 | |
Magdalena will tell you a little bit about the brain changes we got. | 0:28:27 | 0:28:30 | |
OK. | 0:28:30 | 0:28:33 | |
So, remember that we stimulated your brain | 0:28:33 | 0:28:35 | |
and we looked at the neural signal as it travelled from the brain | 0:28:35 | 0:28:38 | |
-to the muscle it controls. -Yeah. | 0:28:38 | 0:28:41 | |
And, erm, we do find in you what we also found in the study, | 0:28:41 | 0:28:45 | |
-so the blue line is your first time, before heading the ball. -Right. | 0:28:45 | 0:28:50 | |
And, you see the stem, that big peak at the start. | 0:28:50 | 0:28:55 | |
-Yeah. -And then you see silence. | 0:28:55 | 0:28:57 | |
-Yeah. -And then it starts scribbling again. | 0:28:57 | 0:29:00 | |
And then you can see in the red graph underneath that. | 0:29:00 | 0:29:02 | |
-After heading the ball, that that period is longer. -Right. | 0:29:02 | 0:29:06 | |
That means there's higher levels of inhibition in, in the brain. | 0:29:06 | 0:29:10 | |
Right. Which means? | 0:29:10 | 0:29:13 | |
So really what we are seeing here, after heading the ball, | 0:29:13 | 0:29:16 | |
it's a disruption of the normal brain chemistry. | 0:29:16 | 0:29:20 | |
If I came in here and looked at the graph, I would say | 0:29:20 | 0:29:23 | |
it looked pretty similar but there is a difference, as in, | 0:29:23 | 0:29:26 | |
it is a little bit slower, the second one, | 0:29:26 | 0:29:28 | |
than it is the first one, which... | 0:29:28 | 0:29:30 | |
But when, if you come to think of it, | 0:29:30 | 0:29:33 | |
then heading a football at 20 or 25mph, | 0:29:33 | 0:29:36 | |
20 balls like I did in quick succession, | 0:29:36 | 0:29:39 | |
then you would think it has to do something. | 0:29:39 | 0:29:43 | |
That arrow afterwards is slightly to the right. | 0:29:43 | 0:29:45 | |
It takes longer to return to normal. | 0:29:45 | 0:29:47 | |
And in an hour or two's time, we'd expect that to go back to normal. | 0:29:47 | 0:29:51 | |
We don't know, because no research has been done, | 0:29:51 | 0:29:54 | |
-what happens when you head the ball 50 times. -Yeah. | 0:29:54 | 0:29:56 | |
-Or you do it again tomorrow, and the next day and the next day. -Right. | 0:29:56 | 0:30:00 | |
So the cumulative effects, we don't know how they add up, | 0:30:00 | 0:30:03 | |
and our suspicion is that if you start looking at that, | 0:30:03 | 0:30:06 | |
you might find more evidence for | 0:30:06 | 0:30:08 | |
changes in brain health as a function of heading the ball. | 0:30:08 | 0:30:12 | |
'I'm leaving Stirling, grateful that I didn't play | 0:30:12 | 0:30:15 | |
'with the old ball when it got wet, | 0:30:15 | 0:30:17 | |
'but slightly worried that heading any kind of ball | 0:30:17 | 0:30:20 | |
'causes changes to the brain.' | 0:30:20 | 0:30:21 | |
There's still work to be done. | 0:30:23 | 0:30:25 | |
Football should be encouraging these universities to do as much research | 0:30:25 | 0:30:29 | |
as possible. But like everything else, | 0:30:29 | 0:30:32 | |
these universities need funding. | 0:30:32 | 0:30:35 | |
There's enough money around nowadays in football. | 0:30:36 | 0:30:39 | |
Just not enough of it has been given to research. | 0:30:39 | 0:30:41 | |
It's about time that we had more definitive answers. | 0:30:41 | 0:30:46 | |
'I've met scientists who are concerned, like me, | 0:30:48 | 0:30:50 | |
'but what about fellow footballers? | 0:30:50 | 0:30:52 | |
'I'm meeting up with an ex-player who was also my first manager, | 0:30:52 | 0:30:56 | |
'Chris Nicholl. | 0:30:56 | 0:30:57 | |
'He taught me so much when it came to heading.' | 0:30:57 | 0:31:01 | |
-Hey! How are you? Nice to see you. -I'm good. | 0:31:01 | 0:31:04 | |
-Nice to see you. -Mate, I'm very good. | 0:31:04 | 0:31:05 | |
-You haven't changed a bit. -All the better for seeing you. | 0:31:05 | 0:31:08 | |
-And you, thanks. -Yeah. I've still got more hair than you. | 0:31:08 | 0:31:12 | |
I know, it's terrible. See, that's what you've done to me! | 0:31:12 | 0:31:14 | |
-COMMENTATOR: -Here's Nicholl. Oh, yes! | 0:31:14 | 0:31:17 | |
Chris was 20 years a player before he went into management, | 0:31:17 | 0:31:20 | |
a League Cup winner with Aston Villa. | 0:31:20 | 0:31:22 | |
He joined Southampton as a centre- half, then rejoined them as manager. | 0:31:22 | 0:31:27 | |
He gave me my big break in the game. | 0:31:27 | 0:31:29 | |
Do you remember those days at Southampton? | 0:31:29 | 0:31:31 | |
-I do, yeah. -Do you, do you? | 0:31:31 | 0:31:33 | |
Not... Like, I'm brain-damaged from heading balls | 0:31:33 | 0:31:37 | |
-but you never headed enough, did you? -I did, I headed far too much. | 0:31:37 | 0:31:40 | |
The reason why is that you had me in the gym most Tuesdays and Thursdays... | 0:31:40 | 0:31:44 | |
-Was it? -..in the gym at Southampton... -Yeah. | 0:31:44 | 0:31:47 | |
..chucking balls in the air for me to constantly head balls. | 0:31:47 | 0:31:51 | |
-Now my memory's terrible. -So it's my fault?! | 0:31:51 | 0:31:53 | |
Do you genuinely believe that heading balls is... | 0:31:53 | 0:31:56 | |
-Yes, I do. -..a cause, partly to blame for it? | 0:31:56 | 0:31:59 | |
Because my memory is in trouble. | 0:31:59 | 0:32:00 | |
-Yeah. -I forget things. | 0:32:00 | 0:32:03 | |
I forget regular things like, | 0:32:03 | 0:32:05 | |
when you forget where your keys are, I mean, that, all people do that. | 0:32:05 | 0:32:11 | |
But when you forget where you live, somebody says, "Where do you live?" and it won't... | 0:32:11 | 0:32:17 | |
How long have, how long have you had that? | 0:32:17 | 0:32:19 | |
How long have you felt like that? Can you remember? Do you know? | 0:32:19 | 0:32:22 | |
Well, the last, the last... Four, five years. | 0:32:22 | 0:32:25 | |
-Have you, yeah? -Something like that. | 0:32:25 | 0:32:26 | |
-And it's getting worse, you think, yeah? -Yeah. It is definitely getting worse. | 0:32:26 | 0:32:30 | |
-Have you been to the doctors? -No. -To...? | 0:32:30 | 0:32:32 | |
-No. -Why? | 0:32:32 | 0:32:34 | |
Because I wouldn't change anything, anyway. | 0:32:34 | 0:32:37 | |
-But... -They wouldn't change the way... -They could help you. -Well... Maybe, yeah. | 0:32:37 | 0:32:41 | |
-So you...? -But I do forget things. -Mm. | 0:32:41 | 0:32:45 | |
-When somebody says, "Where do you live", and you've forgotten that... -Yeah, yeah. | 0:32:45 | 0:32:48 | |
Like that, that... Is a bit of a message. | 0:32:48 | 0:32:52 | |
Does it worry you, how you are? | 0:32:52 | 0:32:54 | |
-It bothers me, yeah. -Does it? -It does bother me. | 0:32:54 | 0:32:56 | |
But doesn't worry you enough to go to a doctor? | 0:32:56 | 0:32:59 | |
No. No. I still wouldn't change it. | 0:32:59 | 0:33:01 | |
And stop being big and brave and bravado. | 0:33:01 | 0:33:04 | |
-No, no. -Does it not worry you it can get worse? | 0:33:04 | 0:33:06 | |
I know I'm getting worse, because... | 0:33:06 | 0:33:10 | |
Things like... Oh, where have I put that knife | 0:33:10 | 0:33:13 | |
or where have I put my toast or... | 0:33:13 | 0:33:16 | |
Yeah, yeah. ..It goes! | 0:33:16 | 0:33:18 | |
CROWD CHEERS | 0:33:18 | 0:33:19 | |
Even knowing that it does damage your brain, I wouldn't change... | 0:33:21 | 0:33:24 | |
-You'd still do it. -I would not change a thing | 0:33:24 | 0:33:26 | |
because it was my job. You go and head it. | 0:33:26 | 0:33:30 | |
-But you would also be... -I would worry if you wanted to change the way you did... | 0:33:30 | 0:33:33 | |
-I know. -Because I was part of that. | 0:33:33 | 0:33:37 | |
My immediate reaction is, his attitude is | 0:33:38 | 0:33:41 | |
so typical of football, of footballers. | 0:33:41 | 0:33:44 | |
Erm, doesn't want help, | 0:33:44 | 0:33:47 | |
doesn't want to admit that help could be, I think, | 0:33:47 | 0:33:52 | |
a huge advantage to him, which is very concerning, very worrying. | 0:33:52 | 0:33:56 | |
Football's reluctance to do anything was changed | 0:33:58 | 0:34:00 | |
when brain damage was addressed elsewhere, | 0:34:00 | 0:34:02 | |
namely in American football. | 0:34:02 | 0:34:06 | |
And once the connection was made between brain trauma and CTE, | 0:34:06 | 0:34:11 | |
the National Football League moved quickly to set up | 0:34:11 | 0:34:13 | |
a compensation fund worth three-quarters of a billion dollars. | 0:34:13 | 0:34:17 | |
Across the United States and across all sports, | 0:34:18 | 0:34:21 | |
protecting the head is fully on the agenda. | 0:34:21 | 0:34:24 | |
But on Monday, the US Soccer Federation took the bold step | 0:34:24 | 0:34:26 | |
of eliminating heading from youth soccer | 0:34:26 | 0:34:28 | |
in an effort to reduce the number of concussions. | 0:34:28 | 0:34:32 | |
Per the new rules, children ten and under will be banned from heading | 0:34:32 | 0:34:35 | |
the ball during any official session. | 0:34:35 | 0:34:37 | |
The banning of heading the ball in the United States is | 0:34:37 | 0:34:39 | |
really more about concussion, rather than heading the ball over and over. | 0:34:39 | 0:34:43 | |
It's really about when these kids go up for a challenge, | 0:34:43 | 0:34:47 | |
their heads come in contact with other heads, | 0:34:47 | 0:34:50 | |
or they hit an arm or they fall on the floor, erm, and that, | 0:34:50 | 0:34:53 | |
that creates more significant damage in the brain. | 0:34:53 | 0:34:57 | |
Young girls seem to get concussion more frequently than young boys | 0:34:57 | 0:35:02 | |
so we don't really know why that is. We need to understand that. | 0:35:02 | 0:35:05 | |
Now, the problem is, we don't have conclusive scientific evidence | 0:35:05 | 0:35:10 | |
to suggest that heading the ball in young children | 0:35:10 | 0:35:16 | |
is going to lead to neurodegeneration later in life. | 0:35:16 | 0:35:19 | |
We know for example that children have large heads and small necks, | 0:35:19 | 0:35:23 | |
so there's more wobbling of the brain inside the skull, | 0:35:23 | 0:35:26 | |
therefore that can lead to more damage compared with an adult. | 0:35:26 | 0:35:30 | |
The other issue that we have is that children's brains are still | 0:35:30 | 0:35:34 | |
developing and they don't have the same neural protection | 0:35:34 | 0:35:37 | |
as does an adult. | 0:35:37 | 0:35:38 | |
We don't have conclusive evidence that that is then leading to | 0:35:38 | 0:35:42 | |
problems later in life or problems in school. | 0:35:42 | 0:35:47 | |
I tend to agree with the idea that very young children really shouldn't be heading the ball. | 0:35:47 | 0:35:51 | |
I think we have sufficient evidence that certainly, | 0:35:51 | 0:35:54 | |
from my point of view, I wouldn't want my children, erm, heading... | 0:35:54 | 0:35:57 | |
You know, playing on a team where they are heading the ball, | 0:35:57 | 0:36:01 | |
day in and day out. I don't think it's worth the risk. | 0:36:01 | 0:36:05 | |
'Imagine if the game without heading became the new football for everyone at every level. | 0:36:05 | 0:36:11 | |
'An old England team-mate of mine went into coaching. | 0:36:11 | 0:36:13 | |
'Les Ferdinand, first with Tottenham Hotspur, | 0:36:13 | 0:36:15 | |
'now Director of Football at Queens Park Rangers. | 0:36:15 | 0:36:18 | |
'He is aware of the debate and his responsibility for keeping his young footballers safe.' | 0:36:18 | 0:36:23 | |
'It was very different when he first started heading the ball.' | 0:36:23 | 0:36:26 | |
One of the coaches was having a laugh and saying, | 0:36:26 | 0:36:28 | |
"Oh, it's all right, the young boys don't head balls", | 0:36:28 | 0:36:31 | |
-so I made it my mission to be able to head balls. -Yeah. | 0:36:31 | 0:36:33 | |
From doing all that, it was a major concern for me, you know, | 0:36:33 | 0:36:37 | |
when I started hearing all this. | 0:36:37 | 0:36:39 | |
Did you ask the young boys at Tottenham | 0:36:41 | 0:36:43 | |
when you were a coach there, or tell them that they had to | 0:36:43 | 0:36:46 | |
improve their heading, they had to do heading practices? | 0:36:46 | 0:36:49 | |
I didn't tell them. They came to me and wanted to improve it. | 0:36:49 | 0:36:52 | |
-Right, OK. -Because it was kind of like one of my fortes. | 0:36:52 | 0:36:54 | |
-Yeah. -So I carried on, you know, | 0:36:54 | 0:36:56 | |
teaching people that wanted to learn the way that I learned. | 0:36:56 | 0:37:00 | |
Because you're aware now of the issue and the subject, | 0:37:00 | 0:37:04 | |
would you ever consider changing training techniques | 0:37:04 | 0:37:08 | |
for the young boys that are coming through the system here at QPR? | 0:37:08 | 0:37:13 | |
I think what I'd do is, you know, I'd want to see more research. | 0:37:13 | 0:37:17 | |
I would speak to the coaches and we will have this discussion about what | 0:37:17 | 0:37:20 | |
we do with the players because, you know, in America | 0:37:20 | 0:37:22 | |
they've banned it so everyone's talking about it and that's, | 0:37:22 | 0:37:25 | |
that's gathering momentum. | 0:37:25 | 0:37:27 | |
And whether we need to work the technique with soft balls. | 0:37:27 | 0:37:30 | |
-Yeah. -Just until we can gather some more information, | 0:37:30 | 0:37:33 | |
to know if this is good for football or not. | 0:37:33 | 0:37:36 | |
'Changes in training, changes on the field.' | 0:37:37 | 0:37:41 | |
As he was most of the game, he was first to the corner. | 0:37:41 | 0:37:44 | |
He wanted it more than they did. | 0:37:44 | 0:37:45 | |
'Long ball football - the English game for so many years, | 0:37:45 | 0:37:48 | |
'of firing the ball out of the defence, | 0:37:48 | 0:37:50 | |
'high towards a big man up front, | 0:37:50 | 0:37:52 | |
'has given way to a more subtle game, | 0:37:52 | 0:37:54 | |
'a game played with the ball kept on the grass, played to the feet.' | 0:37:54 | 0:37:59 | |
Fabulous football. | 0:37:59 | 0:38:01 | |
'Expert headers of the ball have had to adapt. | 0:38:01 | 0:38:04 | |
'John Terry, for example, five times a Premier League champion | 0:38:04 | 0:38:07 | |
'with Chelsea, still playing at Aston Villa.' | 0:38:07 | 0:38:10 | |
So you definitely think there, you don't head the ball now as much, | 0:38:11 | 0:38:15 | |
one, in training, or two, in a game, as you did years ago? | 0:38:15 | 0:38:17 | |
Yeah, in training, it's probably, probably zero, actually, | 0:38:17 | 0:38:21 | |
-because the ball's probably 99% on the floor. -Right. | 0:38:21 | 0:38:24 | |
I think the game's evolved over the years as well. | 0:38:24 | 0:38:26 | |
When I first come on the scene playing, | 0:38:26 | 0:38:28 | |
-the goalkeeper would kick it and I'd try and head it as far as I could back up the field. -Right. | 0:38:28 | 0:38:31 | |
I think the distance side of it has kind of gone out of the game a little bit. | 0:38:31 | 0:38:35 | |
With the managers that you had over the years, | 0:38:35 | 0:38:37 | |
has there been a different feeling towards heading, | 0:38:37 | 0:38:40 | |
regarding foreign coaches, or the English coaches? | 0:38:40 | 0:38:43 | |
Well, I think the English coaches, definitely, kind of, my early days, | 0:38:43 | 0:38:46 | |
YTS days, first-year pros, that kind of thing, | 0:38:46 | 0:38:48 | |
was really kind of specified on, you know, doing that in training, training drills. | 0:38:48 | 0:38:55 | |
I think as the foreign coaches come in, it was a case of, | 0:38:55 | 0:38:57 | |
"Right, can you chest it? Can you bring it down?" | 0:38:57 | 0:38:59 | |
But I'm seeing hardly anything at all in training. | 0:38:59 | 0:39:01 | |
Yeah. | 0:39:01 | 0:39:02 | |
Unless you're doing the shooting exercise and you might, you know, score. | 0:39:02 | 0:39:05 | |
Compared to when you first started training, many years ago. | 0:39:05 | 0:39:08 | |
Yeah, 100%. And that's, that's been the case for the last, probably six, seven years for me, | 0:39:08 | 0:39:12 | |
so I think as the game is kind of getting better and we're learning, | 0:39:12 | 0:39:15 | |
-you know, it's going to help in the future anyway. -Good. | 0:39:15 | 0:39:18 | |
Would there ever be a time that you said to your kids, | 0:39:18 | 0:39:21 | |
-"No, you're not allowed to head the ball?" -No. | 0:39:21 | 0:39:23 | |
Because you have a boy and a girl. | 0:39:23 | 0:39:24 | |
Yeah, probably the opposite, actually. | 0:39:24 | 0:39:26 | |
My girl plays at Chelsea and actually, | 0:39:26 | 0:39:28 | |
I'm encouraging her to go and attack it. | 0:39:28 | 0:39:29 | |
Because more so in girls' football, they don't really head the ball. | 0:39:29 | 0:39:33 | |
And a kind of corner comes in, | 0:39:33 | 0:39:34 | |
and everyone kind of shies away from it a little bit, | 0:39:34 | 0:39:37 | |
and I'm trying to encourage my girl that, rather than that ball hit you | 0:39:37 | 0:39:40 | |
and kind of probably do some damage, | 0:39:40 | 0:39:42 | |
if you go and attack it and meet the ball, the contact's better. | 0:39:42 | 0:39:45 | |
You know, no point heading it on... | 0:39:45 | 0:39:47 | |
-The technique. -Yeah, there is a technique to it. | 0:39:47 | 0:39:49 | |
And if you can do that in the right way you'll prevent hopefully anything in the future. | 0:39:49 | 0:39:53 | |
Mm-hm, yeah. | 0:39:53 | 0:39:54 | |
-The researchers actually say that girls are more at risk than boys or men. -Yeah. | 0:39:54 | 0:40:00 | |
Does that... Will that change your feeling towards it? | 0:40:00 | 0:40:03 | |
Listen, it's my little girl. She's my world, you know? | 0:40:03 | 0:40:07 | |
I think her playing and seeing her play - she loves football... | 0:40:07 | 0:40:11 | |
No, I would still encourage her to go and attack it. | 0:40:11 | 0:40:15 | |
I think until there's real evidence to show that | 0:40:15 | 0:40:17 | |
players in the future are really suffering, | 0:40:17 | 0:40:19 | |
all we can actually pinpoint it to, to specifically heading the ball... | 0:40:19 | 0:40:23 | |
But as a parent, as my kids, | 0:40:23 | 0:40:25 | |
I wouldn't discourage them to go and head the ball. | 0:40:25 | 0:40:28 | |
Football, slow to change without more evidence, | 0:40:28 | 0:40:31 | |
but changing all the same. | 0:40:31 | 0:40:34 | |
There are protocols in place when it comes to concussion | 0:40:34 | 0:40:36 | |
which isn't the same thing as the repeated action of heading, | 0:40:36 | 0:40:39 | |
but at least shows greater respect for the head, | 0:40:39 | 0:40:43 | |
which wasn't always the case in my day. | 0:40:43 | 0:40:47 | |
There's pictures out there with me, in a bandage. | 0:40:47 | 0:40:50 | |
There's blood teeming down my face - where I've gone off, | 0:40:50 | 0:40:53 | |
I'd had stitches, they've put a bandage on. | 0:40:53 | 0:40:56 | |
I've gone and headed another ball, | 0:40:56 | 0:40:57 | |
the stitches have come out | 0:40:57 | 0:40:59 | |
and you can visibly see the blood pouring down my face, | 0:40:59 | 0:41:02 | |
which is what we did then. | 0:41:02 | 0:41:06 | |
It's what was expected of us. | 0:41:07 | 0:41:09 | |
You run off the pitch, | 0:41:09 | 0:41:10 | |
you got stitched up, and you had to go back on again. | 0:41:10 | 0:41:13 | |
'I've taken the big blows, | 0:41:13 | 0:41:14 | |
'and I played at a time when heading was still very fashionable. | 0:41:14 | 0:41:18 | |
'I've taken all those little impacts that may add up to something. | 0:41:18 | 0:41:22 | |
'I seem to qualify on all counts to ask the question, "Am I in danger?" | 0:41:22 | 0:41:28 | |
'I think the time has come to put myself to the big test, | 0:41:28 | 0:41:31 | |
'an MRI scan at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital, Glasgow. | 0:41:31 | 0:41:36 | |
'What damage from all that heading will be revealed?' | 0:41:36 | 0:41:40 | |
I'm a bit nervous, actually, now. | 0:41:40 | 0:41:42 | |
Oh, you shouldn't be nervous. | 0:41:42 | 0:41:45 | |
So just take a seat, Alan, and I'll get one of the radiographers | 0:41:45 | 0:41:49 | |
to go through the MRI check list with you. Okey doke. OK. | 0:41:49 | 0:41:54 | |
I'm a bit nervous, actually. They've just given me the words, | 0:41:54 | 0:41:57 | |
as in to say, "You do know that if we find something, then..." | 0:41:57 | 0:42:02 | |
I said, "Well, if you do, it's best that you tell me, | 0:42:02 | 0:42:05 | |
"so we can work on something." | 0:42:05 | 0:42:07 | |
So surgery in your lifetime, you've had tendon repair on your left knee twice. | 0:42:08 | 0:42:12 | |
-Yeah. -ACL repair. -Yeah. | 0:42:12 | 0:42:14 | |
-Hernias, erm, fractured, dislocated your ankle. -Yep. | 0:42:14 | 0:42:17 | |
Is that the only things you've had? | 0:42:17 | 0:42:20 | |
Only things?! That's enough! | 0:42:20 | 0:42:22 | |
-Nothing else has slipped your mind? -That's it, yeah. | 0:42:22 | 0:42:25 | |
Nice gear, eh? | 0:42:26 | 0:42:28 | |
THEY LAUGH | 0:42:28 | 0:42:29 | |
I'm going to do a nice, sort of, structural scan of your brain, | 0:42:34 | 0:42:37 | |
so that'll take about five minutes. | 0:42:37 | 0:42:38 | |
And then we're going to do what we call a spectroscopy scan, | 0:42:38 | 0:42:41 | |
so that actually gives us a nice profile of some of the chemicals in your brain. | 0:42:41 | 0:42:45 | |
-Right. -And if there's any problems | 0:42:45 | 0:42:47 | |
then we can discuss that further, and inform your clinician. | 0:42:47 | 0:42:50 | |
Have you got any concerns or questions? | 0:42:50 | 0:42:52 | |
No, I think I'm all right. | 0:42:52 | 0:42:53 | |
-That's the scanner. -Yep. -So, Dr McLean will... | 0:42:56 | 0:43:00 | |
MACHINE BLEEPING OBSCURES SPEECH | 0:43:00 | 0:43:03 | |
OK. | 0:43:04 | 0:43:05 | |
How are you doing, Alan? Can you hear me OK? | 0:43:11 | 0:43:13 | |
-Yeah. -OK, just going to get started - nice and still. | 0:43:13 | 0:43:15 | |
There's going to be some loud noise coming up. | 0:43:15 | 0:43:18 | |
PIERCING BLEEP | 0:43:20 | 0:43:21 | |
So we're acquiring a scan at the minute, and | 0:43:25 | 0:43:28 | |
once we've acquired that we'll plan the spectroscopy scan. | 0:43:28 | 0:43:33 | |
That's the scan that looks at the chemicals in Alan's brain. | 0:43:33 | 0:43:38 | |
And again we'll be looking to see that that's normal. | 0:43:38 | 0:43:41 | |
-You've found my brain, then? -Absolutely. It's all right. | 0:43:44 | 0:43:46 | |
I don't like the way you're all being a bit apprehensive here. | 0:43:46 | 0:43:49 | |
-No, we're fine. -Absolutely fine - don't worry. | 0:43:49 | 0:43:52 | |
So a nice way I think about the brain is you've got your white matter, | 0:43:53 | 0:43:57 | |
which is a bit like all the connections, | 0:43:57 | 0:43:59 | |
so you see that in light grey here, and then there's the grey matter | 0:43:59 | 0:44:02 | |
which is the cortex, so the bit on the outside. | 0:44:02 | 0:44:04 | |
The white matter's a bit like your connections, | 0:44:04 | 0:44:06 | |
with the grey matter, the bit that's doing the thinking, the processing. | 0:44:06 | 0:44:09 | |
Your brain's sitting in this sort of protective fluid, | 0:44:09 | 0:44:11 | |
so that's what... Some people think you're looking into holes in | 0:44:11 | 0:44:14 | |
the image, thinking there's holes in your brain, | 0:44:14 | 0:44:16 | |
but it's perfectly normal to have those holes. | 0:44:16 | 0:44:19 | |
We did notice you had a little artefact, we think, | 0:44:19 | 0:44:21 | |
just on the surface of your brain. | 0:44:21 | 0:44:23 | |
It might be just from a little bit of metal, maybe. | 0:44:23 | 0:44:25 | |
-Have I? -Potentially, yeah. -Oh. Interesting. | 0:44:25 | 0:44:28 | |
We were able to look at an area of your brain | 0:44:30 | 0:44:32 | |
and look at the sort of chemical profile for that area, | 0:44:32 | 0:44:35 | |
so this looks normal to me for that area of the brain. | 0:44:35 | 0:44:38 | |
That's reassuring. I'll take that as good news. | 0:44:38 | 0:44:42 | |
I've got some metal in my head! | 0:44:43 | 0:44:46 | |
'Just an old staple to patch me up after a clash of heads.' | 0:44:46 | 0:44:50 | |
I was a little bit nervous when I was going in there, | 0:44:50 | 0:44:52 | |
but having the news that everything is fine and is normal, | 0:44:52 | 0:44:56 | |
and the question I asked him was, | 0:44:56 | 0:44:58 | |
"If you didn't know who I was or if I'd played football for 20 years | 0:44:58 | 0:45:01 | |
"then would you look at that brain and say it was perfectly normal?" | 0:45:01 | 0:45:06 | |
The answer came back and he said it was perfectly normal and all fine. | 0:45:06 | 0:45:09 | |
So very good news. | 0:45:09 | 0:45:10 | |
'In general, I've come through it pretty well. | 0:45:12 | 0:45:15 | |
'I'm as relieved as an old pro can be, I suppose. | 0:45:15 | 0:45:18 | |
'Nothing to be worried about - for the moment. | 0:45:18 | 0:45:21 | |
'But footballers seem particularly prone to early-onset dementia. | 0:45:21 | 0:45:25 | |
'CTE stalks us. | 0:45:25 | 0:45:27 | |
'I can't shake off the idea of it, | 0:45:27 | 0:45:30 | |
'and the struggle that may lie ahead. | 0:45:30 | 0:45:32 | |
'John Stiles knows all about that. He is the son of Nobby, | 0:45:35 | 0:45:38 | |
'Man United legend and the cheeky face of a golden age. | 0:45:38 | 0:45:41 | |
'Nobby is one of the 1966 World Cup heroes struck down by dementia.' | 0:45:41 | 0:45:47 | |
-How's your dad? -Poorly. | 0:45:47 | 0:45:48 | |
-Is he? -Yeah, Alan, he's got advanced dementia, so he's now in a home. | 0:45:48 | 0:45:54 | |
It's just terrible to watch the person that you love, | 0:45:54 | 0:45:56 | |
especially somebody as lively and as nice a person as my dad, | 0:45:56 | 0:46:00 | |
just disappear, really. | 0:46:00 | 0:46:02 | |
LAUGHTER | 0:46:02 | 0:46:04 | |
Do you hold the game responsible? | 0:46:05 | 0:46:08 | |
I'm utterly convinced that heading the ball in training... | 0:46:08 | 0:46:12 | |
..is, I believe it's responsible, but that's only my opinion. | 0:46:14 | 0:46:18 | |
Are you angry, and if so what are you angry about? | 0:46:18 | 0:46:22 | |
What I'm really angry about, Alan, | 0:46:22 | 0:46:24 | |
is that it's been known for a long time now, | 0:46:24 | 0:46:27 | |
since Jeff Astle's diagnosis, | 0:46:27 | 0:46:29 | |
a coroner actually said heading the ball has contributed to killing him. | 0:46:29 | 0:46:33 | |
-What I am angry about is, in that time, nothing's been done. -Yeah. | 0:46:33 | 0:46:37 | |
And dementia is treated as a different... | 0:46:37 | 0:46:39 | |
It's not treated as a disease. | 0:46:39 | 0:46:41 | |
It's treated like old-age, so you've got to cover the costs yourself. | 0:46:41 | 0:46:44 | |
And all these families, as well as watching their loved one disappear, | 0:46:44 | 0:46:48 | |
have got no help, and most of them have had to sell their homes to pay for the care. | 0:46:48 | 0:46:52 | |
Now if that's been caused by heading the ball, that's a disgrace. | 0:46:52 | 0:46:56 | |
Mm. What do you feel that needs to be done? | 0:46:56 | 0:46:59 | |
I think, as they've done in America - they've banned it for under 11s - | 0:46:59 | 0:47:02 | |
I think they should do that now. | 0:47:02 | 0:47:04 | |
Banning heading now for kids? | 0:47:04 | 0:47:06 | |
Well, I believe so. | 0:47:06 | 0:47:08 | |
In the matches, you head the ball maybe - what, three, four times, maybe? | 0:47:08 | 0:47:13 | |
But it's the training. It's the training that's the problem. | 0:47:13 | 0:47:16 | |
And I think coaches shouldn't be throwing missiles at kids' heads | 0:47:16 | 0:47:20 | |
for them to head it back. | 0:47:20 | 0:47:22 | |
Until we know, they should absolutely stop kids heading balls. | 0:47:22 | 0:47:26 | |
My oldest son now is 33. He tried to be a footballer. | 0:47:26 | 0:47:30 | |
And I don't feel a guilt, as such, but if my boy ends up developing problems, | 0:47:31 | 0:47:36 | |
that could've been prevented, and that's a disgrace. | 0:47:36 | 0:47:40 | |
-Yeah, that has to be a concern and a worry for you. -Yeah. | 0:47:40 | 0:47:44 | |
And I'm almost complicit in that. | 0:47:44 | 0:47:47 | |
I can see why football is reluctant to change its rules. | 0:47:47 | 0:47:50 | |
No heading would be like cricket without fast bowling, | 0:47:50 | 0:47:53 | |
or rugby banning tackling, | 0:47:53 | 0:47:56 | |
but there's also the question of the duty of care. | 0:47:56 | 0:47:59 | |
Players who really aren't that old going into care homes to die. | 0:47:59 | 0:48:04 | |
Who can help? | 0:48:04 | 0:48:06 | |
Well, there's the Professional Footballers' Association, | 0:48:06 | 0:48:08 | |
the PFA, the players' union. | 0:48:08 | 0:48:11 | |
And there's the Football Association, the FA, | 0:48:11 | 0:48:13 | |
the sport's governing body. | 0:48:13 | 0:48:15 | |
Of course, they need the facts first. | 0:48:15 | 0:48:19 | |
Facts that come from research - scientific research. | 0:48:19 | 0:48:22 | |
Dawn Astle has campaigned for answers from the authorities | 0:48:24 | 0:48:27 | |
since her dad's death 15 years ago. | 0:48:27 | 0:48:29 | |
'But are they out there looking for them?' | 0:48:30 | 0:48:33 | |
The PFA and the FA started a study back in 2001, | 0:48:33 | 0:48:36 | |
which was actually before Dad died, but | 0:48:36 | 0:48:39 | |
I had an e-mail off the FA to say, unfortunately, you know, | 0:48:40 | 0:48:43 | |
it didn't reach its conclusions because they've done it on 30-odd | 0:48:43 | 0:48:46 | |
youngsters in the game and none of them made it as pros | 0:48:46 | 0:48:48 | |
so they fell away, so it only lasted a few years. | 0:48:48 | 0:48:50 | |
So that was so bitterly, bitterly disappointing. | 0:48:52 | 0:48:56 | |
So it's as if it collapsed, they thought we'd gone away, | 0:48:56 | 0:48:58 | |
and they just left it - and that's wrong. | 0:48:58 | 0:49:01 | |
I know you have had meetings that you have asked questions, | 0:49:01 | 0:49:06 | |
and they have promised you they would send questions to Fifa, | 0:49:06 | 0:49:10 | |
and that was two or three years ago, | 0:49:10 | 0:49:12 | |
and you're still waiting for answers. Is that correct? | 0:49:12 | 0:49:15 | |
Football doesn't seem to want to know. | 0:49:15 | 0:49:17 | |
And it SHOULD want to know. It's not just about Dad now. | 0:49:17 | 0:49:21 | |
It's about all these former footballers and their families, | 0:49:21 | 0:49:24 | |
who have come forward, very bravely. | 0:49:24 | 0:49:27 | |
I said, "It's not just about the past now. | 0:49:27 | 0:49:30 | |
"It's about football's future." | 0:49:30 | 0:49:31 | |
You know, we've got to protect, you know, | 0:49:31 | 0:49:33 | |
kids into the game, you know, football's future. | 0:49:33 | 0:49:38 | |
The PFA, they only exist for player welfare. | 0:49:38 | 0:49:41 | |
They should be screaming from the rooftops for these players. | 0:49:41 | 0:49:44 | |
This is killing their players. This should be their priority. | 0:49:44 | 0:49:48 | |
'The surprising thing for me is, actually, no-one has stood up | 0:49:48 | 0:49:51 | |
'and said, "You know what, | 0:49:51 | 0:49:53 | |
'"we got this one wrong - we should have looked at it more."' | 0:49:53 | 0:49:57 | |
No-one's said, "Yeah, we've messed up here. | 0:49:57 | 0:49:59 | |
"We had a chance to do something 15 years ago, and we haven't." | 0:49:59 | 0:50:04 | |
'What is being done, or what isn't being done? | 0:50:04 | 0:50:06 | |
'Gordon Taylor has been chief executive of | 0:50:06 | 0:50:08 | |
'the players' union, the PFA, for 36 years. | 0:50:08 | 0:50:11 | |
'Looking after players past and present is what he does.' | 0:50:11 | 0:50:18 | |
You've got 50,000 members. | 0:50:18 | 0:50:20 | |
-Do we know how many of those have dementia? -No, I don't. | 0:50:20 | 0:50:25 | |
Is that difficult to do? Can we not... | 0:50:25 | 0:50:27 | |
Is that not an easy thing to do? | 0:50:27 | 0:50:28 | |
At the moment, with modern technology, | 0:50:28 | 0:50:30 | |
we're looking to try to establish a really effective database. | 0:50:30 | 0:50:35 | |
There's an anger from my side, because over the last 12 months, | 0:50:35 | 0:50:40 | |
having sat down with families who have lost loved ones, | 0:50:40 | 0:50:46 | |
there's a lot of them feel as if they've been left on their own. | 0:50:46 | 0:50:50 | |
I think it's the PFA's job to do all we can to look, to provide support. | 0:50:50 | 0:50:56 | |
We have said money is going to be put towards research, | 0:50:56 | 0:51:00 | |
and also towards respite care for the more and more former players who need help. | 0:51:00 | 0:51:06 | |
I went up and spoke to Willie Stewart, and I said to him, | 0:51:06 | 0:51:09 | |
"What is it you need?" And he said, "Well, we need research." | 0:51:09 | 0:51:12 | |
-Mm. -And, well, I'm thinking, well, hang on a minute, we started... | 0:51:12 | 0:51:17 | |
Remember here we started the research in 2002. | 0:51:17 | 0:51:20 | |
It's now 2017, and it seems as if we're no further forward. | 0:51:20 | 0:51:24 | |
Well, it's... | 0:51:24 | 0:51:25 | |
Because it seems as if the same questions are still being asked. | 0:51:25 | 0:51:28 | |
They are. The issue of the lower level but continuous problems, | 0:51:28 | 0:51:31 | |
with heading a ball, and whether it will have long-term effects, | 0:51:31 | 0:51:35 | |
is something we are looking to establish - | 0:51:35 | 0:51:37 | |
either a definitive link, or not at all. | 0:51:37 | 0:51:39 | |
And from that point of view, | 0:51:39 | 0:51:41 | |
the first research we've done was inconclusive, | 0:51:41 | 0:51:45 | |
but we are prepared to commit the money to research. | 0:51:45 | 0:51:49 | |
Do you think it's being swept under the carpet, | 0:51:49 | 0:51:52 | |
because of people who've been scared to face lawsuits? | 0:51:52 | 0:51:57 | |
Well, it has been put to me that maybe the clubs are very wary | 0:51:57 | 0:52:02 | |
because there may be compensation. And I said, well, you know, | 0:52:02 | 0:52:05 | |
you can only be negligent if you know for certain | 0:52:05 | 0:52:08 | |
that there is this link. | 0:52:08 | 0:52:10 | |
But what I am saying is football has a duty to see | 0:52:10 | 0:52:13 | |
-if there is a causal link... -Yeah. | 0:52:13 | 0:52:15 | |
..because if there is, | 0:52:15 | 0:52:17 | |
it could significantly increase the problems in later life. | 0:52:17 | 0:52:22 | |
Then we'd need to look at the rules of the game, and address it. | 0:52:22 | 0:52:26 | |
I have been disappointed with Fifa, | 0:52:26 | 0:52:30 | |
but as the governing body they have not taken the lead, | 0:52:30 | 0:52:32 | |
or any of the confederations. | 0:52:32 | 0:52:35 | |
But it's fair to say the FA have now agreed | 0:52:35 | 0:52:38 | |
that we will do this together. | 0:52:38 | 0:52:40 | |
I'm not exactly bowled over by the rush to investigate. | 0:52:42 | 0:52:45 | |
Nobody in charge seems to want to know the scale of the problem, | 0:52:45 | 0:52:49 | |
if there is one. | 0:52:49 | 0:52:50 | |
'Football is played everywhere. | 0:52:52 | 0:52:54 | |
'The game is run by the Football Association, the FA. | 0:52:54 | 0:52:58 | |
'I've come to their home at St George's Park | 0:52:58 | 0:53:00 | |
'to see their new medical performance director, | 0:53:00 | 0:53:02 | |
'Charlotte Cowie. | 0:53:02 | 0:53:06 | |
'One of Charlotte's first tasks has been to commission research into this issue.' | 0:53:06 | 0:53:11 | |
Do you know how many footballers have got dementia? | 0:53:11 | 0:53:15 | |
I think that, in a nutshell, is the question that we are asking. | 0:53:15 | 0:53:18 | |
And it sounds quite simple. You just go to a load of footballers, | 0:53:18 | 0:53:21 | |
and say, you know, check if they've got dementia | 0:53:21 | 0:53:24 | |
and then you've got your answer. | 0:53:24 | 0:53:25 | |
What I've probably learned is to run a research project where you | 0:53:25 | 0:53:30 | |
get some answers that are reliable. It's more complicated than that. | 0:53:30 | 0:53:34 | |
We've used a panel of experts in concussion and in research | 0:53:34 | 0:53:38 | |
to try and help us formulate a study | 0:53:38 | 0:53:41 | |
that gives us an answer as quickly as possible, | 0:53:41 | 0:53:44 | |
-if we can do, but more importantly gives us some results that are really reliable. -Yeah. | 0:53:44 | 0:53:50 | |
Tell us a little bit about that research. | 0:53:50 | 0:53:51 | |
What is it you're actually doing? | 0:53:51 | 0:53:53 | |
What we'd like to do is make it potentially a shorter study | 0:53:53 | 0:53:57 | |
by looking back at ex-professional footballers, | 0:53:57 | 0:54:00 | |
and working out whether they have health problems, including dementia. | 0:54:00 | 0:54:03 | |
We'll also look at their general health. | 0:54:03 | 0:54:05 | |
The most important thing is, is dementia more common in footballers than in the normal population? | 0:54:05 | 0:54:11 | |
That's the question that Dawn Astle and everyone else wants to know - | 0:54:11 | 0:54:14 | |
-"Is it a problem?" -Mm. | 0:54:14 | 0:54:16 | |
And I think one of the things that we need to try and establish is | 0:54:16 | 0:54:19 | |
that if there is a link to football and dementia in some players, | 0:54:19 | 0:54:24 | |
if that is related to concussion. | 0:54:24 | 0:54:26 | |
And if that is the risk, rather than heading, | 0:54:26 | 0:54:29 | |
then we need to know that as well. | 0:54:29 | 0:54:31 | |
-They've banned heading in America for under-11s. -Yeah. | 0:54:32 | 0:54:35 | |
What's your feeling on that? | 0:54:35 | 0:54:36 | |
Do you think we should do that in this country? | 0:54:36 | 0:54:39 | |
I think that is open for review at any point. | 0:54:39 | 0:54:42 | |
If the evidence is emerging - even early evidence - | 0:54:42 | 0:54:45 | |
then I think that's something that we always have to bear in mind, | 0:54:45 | 0:54:49 | |
but at the moment the advice that we are collecting from people who are | 0:54:49 | 0:54:52 | |
working in that area is that they don't feel that | 0:54:52 | 0:54:56 | |
that's the most logical step to take. | 0:54:56 | 0:54:59 | |
There is a lot of anger out there from people who have suffered, | 0:54:59 | 0:55:02 | |
and the families that are now suffering. | 0:55:02 | 0:55:05 | |
-Can you understand why? -Yeah, massively. | 0:55:06 | 0:55:09 | |
I met with the Astle family. Talking to Dawn about | 0:55:09 | 0:55:13 | |
what she and her family went through, | 0:55:13 | 0:55:15 | |
watching Jeff in this sort of, the last stages of a really horrific disease... | 0:55:15 | 0:55:20 | |
-Yeah. -Erm... | 0:55:20 | 0:55:21 | |
..probably affected me emotionally a lot, actually, | 0:55:22 | 0:55:25 | |
-and so I feel very personally invested in trying to see this through and make it happen. -Mm. | 0:55:25 | 0:55:29 | |
And I think we're in a good place now but I do understand there's been | 0:55:29 | 0:55:33 | |
a lot of frustration and, you know, whatever the answers are, | 0:55:33 | 0:55:36 | |
a lot of heartache. | 0:55:36 | 0:55:38 | |
It seems as if people are running away from this problem. Do you get that feeling? | 0:55:38 | 0:55:43 | |
Well, I feel... | 0:55:43 | 0:55:45 | |
That's the one thing that I can say with confidence. | 0:55:45 | 0:55:47 | |
I feel we're running towards this problem at the moment. | 0:55:47 | 0:55:49 | |
-I do feel like... -But that hasn't been the case in the past. | 0:55:49 | 0:55:53 | |
I think the FA did make a conscious decision not to wait for Fifa or | 0:55:53 | 0:55:56 | |
Uefa, and I think that was the right decision and they've done the right | 0:55:56 | 0:56:00 | |
thing on that, but it was probably a difficult decision to make. | 0:56:00 | 0:56:04 | |
As the FA are custodians of the game, | 0:56:04 | 0:56:06 | |
do you feel as if apologies are owed to the families that have suffered, | 0:56:06 | 0:56:11 | |
and still don't have any answers? | 0:56:11 | 0:56:12 | |
Erm... | 0:56:12 | 0:56:13 | |
I think...certainly we need to consider those people, | 0:56:14 | 0:56:19 | |
and then I think we need to just... | 0:56:19 | 0:56:22 | |
I think the FA just needs to get this done. That's what I would say. | 0:56:22 | 0:56:25 | |
'The research has at last been commissioned, | 0:56:29 | 0:56:32 | |
'but even before we have new findings | 0:56:32 | 0:56:34 | |
'football must look after old players with dementia, | 0:56:34 | 0:56:37 | |
'put an end to this sense that once you're done with playing | 0:56:37 | 0:56:40 | |
'you can be put on the scrapheap. | 0:56:40 | 0:56:42 | |
'Life can be confusing and scary for people with dementia, | 0:56:44 | 0:56:47 | |
'but there are support groups for those who are living with it. | 0:56:47 | 0:56:51 | |
'One such group offering support to families is Sporting Memories. | 0:56:51 | 0:56:55 | |
'Former centre forward Matt Tees has invited me along to his local group | 0:56:55 | 0:56:58 | |
'at Waltham Library in Grimsby.' | 0:56:58 | 0:57:01 | |
CHEERY HUBBUB | 0:57:01 | 0:57:03 | |
-Hello, everyone! -Have a seat, Alan. -Thank you. -Welcome. | 0:57:03 | 0:57:06 | |
-Is this my seat? -Yes. | 0:57:06 | 0:57:07 | |
By pure coincidence, we've just been doing an Alan Shearer quiz. | 0:57:07 | 0:57:10 | |
-Oh, good. -So maybe you could answer the last question for us. | 0:57:10 | 0:57:13 | |
How many career goals did Alan have to his name | 0:57:13 | 0:57:15 | |
by the end of the '97-'98 season? | 0:57:15 | 0:57:18 | |
Can there not be an easier one for me?! | 0:57:18 | 0:57:21 | |
Career goals, '97-'98... | 0:57:23 | 0:57:25 | |
'Sporting Memories is a charity which works with elderly people | 0:57:25 | 0:57:28 | |
'who might struggle with dementia, depression or loneliness.' | 0:57:28 | 0:57:33 | |
'They use sport as a way of bringing people together.' | 0:57:33 | 0:57:36 | |
We know that people need to remain connected. | 0:57:38 | 0:57:40 | |
That's to their family, to their friends, to their communities, | 0:57:40 | 0:57:44 | |
and to their passions and interests. | 0:57:44 | 0:57:45 | |
And sport is a huge common factor in terms of getting people together. | 0:57:45 | 0:57:50 | |
-ALL: -Yeah! | 0:57:50 | 0:57:52 | |
But we also know that to age well we need to learn new things, | 0:57:53 | 0:57:57 | |
and the Sporting Memories group, | 0:57:57 | 0:57:58 | |
you can learn so many different new things | 0:57:58 | 0:58:00 | |
around the history and heritage of sport and people's stories. | 0:58:00 | 0:58:04 | |
Denis Law! | 0:58:04 | 0:58:06 | |
We have to stress - it's not a dementia focus group. | 0:58:07 | 0:58:10 | |
-Not everybody has dementia, but... -Majority? -No. | 0:58:10 | 0:58:12 | |
-Minority. -Right, OK. | 0:58:12 | 0:58:14 | |
But it's about mixing people up, | 0:58:14 | 0:58:16 | |
-it's about inclusion, integration. -And they love it. | 0:58:16 | 0:58:19 | |
-Everybody has a fantastic time. -Yeah, they love it, yeah. | 0:58:19 | 0:58:22 | |
'Sporting Memories have worked with | 0:58:22 | 0:58:23 | |
'the Professional Footballers' Association to produce a leaflet | 0:58:23 | 0:58:26 | |
'that can be given to former players | 0:58:26 | 0:58:28 | |
'who've been diagnosed with dementia.' | 0:58:28 | 0:58:31 | |
The guide has been written to give some practical advice | 0:58:31 | 0:58:34 | |
to people who have got that diagnosis. | 0:58:34 | 0:58:37 | |
And these are ready now? | 0:58:37 | 0:58:38 | |
They're just at the designers, | 0:58:38 | 0:58:40 | |
and the PFA will be making them available to members. | 0:58:40 | 0:58:42 | |
-Good. That's a start, then. -Yeah. | 0:58:42 | 0:58:46 | |
'This story is about our people, footballing people, | 0:58:47 | 0:58:51 | |
'who need the custodians of the game to embrace and fund science | 0:58:51 | 0:58:55 | |
'to understand the effects of heading.' | 0:58:55 | 0:58:58 | |
The researchers are out there, because I've met them. | 0:58:58 | 0:59:01 | |
They want to do it, but they need funding. | 0:59:01 | 0:59:03 | |
But more importantly, they need raw materials | 0:59:03 | 0:59:06 | |
to conduct this research - brains. | 0:59:06 | 0:59:09 | |
Not just footballing brains or diseased brains, | 0:59:09 | 0:59:12 | |
but healthy brains from all walks of life. | 0:59:12 | 0:59:15 | |
Heading is an integral part of our game. | 0:59:15 | 0:59:20 | |
Coaches need educating to be aware of the dangers of the game, | 0:59:20 | 0:59:24 | |
but don't change the rules as yet. | 0:59:24 | 0:59:27 | |
I wouldn't ban heading, because there isn't enough evidence - | 0:59:27 | 0:59:31 | |
and I don't say that lightly. | 0:59:31 | 0:59:32 | |
I see thousands and thousands of kids, on an evening or a weekend, | 0:59:32 | 0:59:35 | |
playing football, and I don't want that to change. | 0:59:35 | 0:59:39 | |
Let science do its work. | 0:59:39 | 0:59:41 | |
Technologies are emerging to provide evidence | 0:59:41 | 0:59:43 | |
so that we can make educated decisions | 0:59:43 | 0:59:45 | |
about how we take our game forward. | 0:59:45 | 0:59:49 | |
It's a tough game, it's a brilliant game. | 0:59:49 | 0:59:52 | |
it's known as our beautiful game. | 0:59:52 | 0:59:54 | |
But let's make sure it's not a killer game. | 0:59:54 | 0:59:57 |