High flyer: Hugh McIlmoyle’s statue outside Brunton Park
Hughie McIlmoyle, remembered with affection at Middlesbrough and with a statue at Carlisle United, is among the latest former footballers to be diagnosed with dementia.
“Rated the best header of a ball ever to play for Boro” says The Who’s Who of Middlesborugh – and therein, very likely, is the rub.
Autopsy has now also confirmed that former Newcastle United manager and Spurs defender Joe Kinnear died with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) caused by repeated head impacts.
In south Wales, meanwhile, a coroner has called for a Prevention of Further Death report at the inquest on Howard Sheppeard, who made a single Sunderland appearance in the 1950s before a lengthy career back in his native Wales with the likes of Newport County and Abergavenny Thursday.
She is writing to the FA and the FA of Wales, in other words, asking what they’re going to do about it.
So it goes on – bang, bang, bang.
News of Hugh McIlmoyle’s illness is forwarded by Bill Gates’s younger son Nick, particularly rueful because McIlmoyle was his knee-high hero – save for his dad, of course – while watching games at Ayresome Park.
Born in Port Glasgow, McMilmoyle started his career with Leicester City, was with Boro under Stan Anderson from 1969-71, scored 44 goals in a season in one of three spells with Carlisle.
Now he’s in a care home in Leicestershire, though still playing what’s described as dementia friendly walking football. His wife Rosalynn talks of his constantly heading a ball that often was wet and, in early days, laced.
“How could you not believe that that would do damage?”
*Joe Kinnear’s CTE has been confirmed – thanks to blog reader Jeff Dawson for the spot – by Dr Willie Stewart, the Glasgow neuro-pathologist who’s the leading authority on the link between constantly heading a ball and dementia and who’s interviewed in No-brainer, my new book on Bill Gates’s life and terrible death.
Russ Doffman, Joe’s daughter, also has no doubt that the sport her father loved was responsible for his death. “Having had time to think about it, we just grew angry because you feel like you know his career has killed him. He could still be Joe and he could still be with us.
“I hear football-mad people say that heading is a massive part of it but it’s killing people, it’s as serious as that.”
Joe’s family is among a large and growing number in legal action against the FA, claiming that they should have done more to ensure player safety.
*Wholly coincidentally, a teatime pint – Spoons in Richmond, £1 99- with Doug Waugh, a greatly agreeable chap who chairs Dementia Forward, a North Yorkshire-based charity.
Doug also buys a copy of No-brainer (£14 99) which comes in useful when I go to the bar, there’s a problem with the pumps, and he has time – fast reader, slow service – to take in the chapter on Nobby Stiles and on his campaigning son, John.
“Really wonderful” he says, kindly. Others may yet care to find out for themselves.
*Book signed, quart quaffed, I head to Wembley to watch Richmond Mavericks – for whom the elder bairn opens the bowling – play cricket for the first time this season.
Wembley? It’s what generations of Richmond School folk call one of the playing fields at the bottom, though football appears to be the only major sport – that and 5s and 3s – not played there.
It’s the Wensleydale Evening League, what might be supposed cricket’s more ebullient extreme – played, as ever, in good spirit and high spirits. The Mavericks beat Newton-le-Willows by nine wickets (A J Amos 1-19) after which we retire for another pint.
Grass Routes 