Several readers, to whom warm thanks, forward a piece from the BBC Sport website headed: “Concussion in football: Dangers known for decades say former players suing governing bodies”.
Coincidentally, the Chronicle in Newcastle has a piece about the family of former United defender John McNamee – “a footballing colossus” now living with advanced dementia – being forced to sell his house to pay for spiralling care home costs.
Two other Newcastle players of that era – John Tudor and Tommy Cassidy – have dementia and need 24-hour care
In short, the story by BBC sports editor Dan Roan says that minutes of an FA meeting as far back as 1983 indicate that the governing body was “always fully aware of the dangers” of concussion in football.
Despite it, says the litigant group, the FA “failed to take action to reduce the risk to players to the lowest reasonable level.”
The FAs of England and Wales, the English Football League and IFAB, the international governing body, are all involved in the High Court action.
Richard Boardman, the claimants’ lawyer, tells Roan: “There has been a systemic failure among football’s governing bodies to limit concussion and sub-concussion cases….sustained by the football playing community.”
It’s further coincidental that No-brainer, my book which weaves the remarkable life story of former Middlesbrough defender Bill Gates with his family’s fight for safer sport, will finally be published on April 8, with a formal launch the following month. Published by Canbury Press, it can be ordered on Amazon now – further details soon.
The book has a pretty glaring omission, however. After more than a year of requests for input and interviews, the FA politely told me to go away.
*Over all the years I’ve attended and written about gravy-in-the-lap do’s, I’ve never been able to decide whether properly they’re “sportsman’s dinners” or “sportsmen’s dinners”. The Dovecot Arts Centre in Stockton has come up with an alternative.
On April 26 they’re hosting an evening with Gary Pallister – a top guy who also worries about dementia and has a chapter in No-brainer. Nick Loughlin forwards the flyer….
*It’s confirmed that, more than 80 years after his death, former Crook miner Jack Greenwell is posthumously – and rather grandly – to be inducted into the National Football Museum’s Hall of Fame.
Guests from around the world are expected at the dinner event at St Mary’s College in Durham on April 16. Very kindly, they’ve invited me, too.
By way of rather more accelerated promotion, it’s also announced that Rebacca Welch – refereeing in the Northern League just ten years ago and now the Premier League’s first female ref – is also to be a Hall of Fame inductee.
Jack Greenwell, who played both for Crook and in West Auckland’s 1909 “World Cup” winning side, played for and twice managed Barcelona before further football adventures in South America – “an outstanding contribution to English football” says the invitation.
It also states that Greenwell’s career has been thrust into the spotlight by a “passionate and committed community of football fans who tirelessly advocated for his story to receive the attention it deserves”.
Largely, however, recognition is down to Harold Stephenson, a gentleman of Crook who for several years has tirelessly and indomitably campaigned for Greenwell’s recognition. Harold has played a blinder, too.
*Chiefly for being a Walker boy, former Newcastle United man Shola Ameobi was mentioned a few days back. Incorrigibly it reminded blog reader Andy Lister of one of Sir Bobby Robson’s classic quotes.
The great Sir Bobby, of course, was notorious for not being good with names, prompting a reporter to ask Ameobi what the manager called him.
“Carl Cort usually” he said.
Grass Routes 