John Stiles, son of Nobby, spoke about the dementia problem plaguing the sport
The son of England legend Nobby Stiles has said he wants a fund to support players who develop brain injuries caused by heading the ball and accused football of "ignoring the issue".
John also hit out at the lack of information being given to current players to warn them of the dangers of CTE dementia.
Speaking to GB News, John Stiles said:
“Quite simply, I am speaking out now because after three years of campaigning after my dad died, to get help for players who are suffering with CTE dementia, nothing's happened.
“So we've got to do something. It's too late for my dad.
“Just to fill you in on the reason why we're so vehement about it is because when dad died, we donated his brain. And his brain was riddled with a disease called chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) that can only be caused by head impacts.
“So we know that heading the ball killed my father.
“Nobody seems to know about this disease that killed my father and I'm convinced that hundreds if not thousands of players have died and are going to die because of it and nothing is being done about it.
“And nothing is being done to help the families who are suffering from the same disease my father had, with care home costs, all the rest of it. There's very little help that's been given to them and that's why we want to shake things up, and we want to get football to take care of this problem. Because it's a real, real problem."
Asked if he felt his father's case was being ignored he continued: "I can't go into details about his case but if you want me to answer it overall, with regards to football, then absolutely, yes.
“I believe that football is washing his hands of it. It knows about it. Jeff Astle’s coroner said 20 years ago, that heading the ball killed him. Then in 2013 they found out that Jeff had CTE, the same as my father.
“This is a real problem. Even doctors and coroners don't know to look for this disease. Obviously, there's other damage - frontal lobe damage – but specifically, this is what killed my father, and we need to get something done to sort this out. It's a scandal. It's an absolute scandal.
“What I want to see is a fund, a proper fund, not like the one that was created recently. In any other industry, if you had workers dying of an injury from the job that they were doing, you would have a union protecting them, but the footballers don't have a union that functions properly.
“It doesn't look after its members. It doesn't look after its ex-players. They're not being looked after because they've got to pay for health care and all the rest of it.
“So, I want a proper fund created that will take care of all the players who get dementia from heading the ball to take care of the health care costs.
“And we want the players to be informed – the current players. I got kicked out of Doncaster Rovers, my ex club, for handing out leaflets to players.
“I went outside and one of the cars came along and one of the lads opened the window and said, ‘give us a leaflet’. Then the last car came along and they said, ‘Sorry, mate. They've just rung us and said we can’t talk to you.’
“I bet Harry Kane doesn't know about it, I bet about Kyle Walker doesn't know about it. I bet Lucy Bronze doesn't know what CTE is and this is a disgrace. They should know and then they can make their own informed decision.
“I'm not saying take heading out of football.
“This is something to do with the national game. What happens is you head the ball and tau protein breaks off. If you don’t have another impact, it settles down.
“Over the years the footballers head tens of thousands of balls. The tau protein clumps up, it lodges on the brain and destroys it and that's what killed my father.
“And that's what we want to tell all the players about.”
