'Pain was sickening' - Ex-players on heading fears

Two former Premier League players have told the BBC of their health fears after years of heading footballs.

Gary Pallister said he experienced sickening migraines during his career, while fellow former England defender Steve Howey has undergone scans which show his brain is in cognitive decline.

"That worry and fear is always there, I think it is for a lot of players," said former England defender Gary Pallister.

Research has found professional footballers have an elevated risk of suffering brain injuries.

Leading campaigner Judith Gates, of Head Safe Football, has written to Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy to ask that heading the ball is declared a national health issue in order to safeguard players in the future.

'Tingling and violent headaches' - Pallister

Pallister won the Premier League in 1993, 1994, 1996 and 1997

Sickening migraines would leave defender Pallister sometimes unable to train for two days during his career.

From around the age of 17, he would occasionally have tingling down his arms and suffer crippling headaches which would blur his vison.

"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," said the ex-Manchester United and Middlesbrough player.

"The following day would leave me absolutely washed out. Two days you were out of the game - the pain, the sickness, the feeling afterwards was awful.

"You kind of wondered being a centre-half and having to head lot of footballs whether that was anything to do with the cause of it. It wasn't until I actually stopped playing football that the migraines kind of disappeared."

Pallister, 59, remembers being accidentally punched in the head by a goalkeeper when competing for a header and ending up in hospital with concussion, despite his manager wanting him to play on.

"I think at this moment I'm OK, I can do my sudokus, try to do a little bit of brain training," said the former defender, who won the Premier League four times with Manchester United.

"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."

'When you think about it now, it's crazy'

Howey, who was a defender for Manchester City and Newcastle, has noticed he sometimes struggles to get words out or forget things that were said 10 minutes earlier.

Short-term memory loss can be an early sign of dementia and he had an MRI scan which showed some cognitive decline.

The 53-year-old said the effects of heading were never really talked about when he played and defenders would even 'break in' their head with extra practice in pre-season so it would not feel so soft.

"When you think about it now it's crazy, but there wasn't the kind of thought about what could possibly happen afterwards. It was always just a case of, this is what my job is," said Howey, who was capped four times by England in the 1990s.

He is among a group of claimants taking legal action against football governing bodies over brain injuries allegedly suffered during their careers.

While older footballs in the 1960s and 70s were heavier when wet, that could lead to fewer headers whereas the speed and movement of more modern balls can cause their own problems.

"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," he added.

Both Pallister and Howey are friends of the family of former Middlesbrough defender Bill Gates, who died last year aged 79 as a result of CTE and inspired the Head Safe Football charity, founded by his wife Judith, who helped organise the first adult football match with heading restrictions at Spennymoor Town in 2021.

"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,'" said Howey.

David Parnaby, assistant coach of the Spennymoor under-nines, has welcomed a rule change which is seeing deliberate heading in matches being phased out by the FA at under-11 level over three seasons.

"We think it's a win-win situation here because heading's been taken out the game, so first and foremost we're protecting the boys," said Parnaby, an ex-Middlesbrough academy director, whose son Stuart played in the Premier League for Boro.

"In my humble, honest opinion, the game has improved at this level. The boys are now being creative with passing in and dribbling in. They really enjoy it."

While both Pallister and Howey say they would probably still have played the game knowing the risks, they say more can be done to educate current players and help former professionals in their retirement.

What does the research say?

Research by experts at Glasgow University in 2019 found footballers were three and a half times more likely to die from a neurodegenerative disease than the normal population.

That study, commissioned by the Football Association and the Professional Footballers' Association, began after a coroner ruled former England and West Bromwich Albion striker Jeff Astle died from a brain disease caused by heading footballs.

In May, it was revealed the family of the late Tottenham defender and Wimbledon manager Joe Kinnear and four Premier League-era players are among claimants taking legal action against football's governing bodies.

Claimants also include Howey and the family of 1966 World Cup winner Nobby Stiles, who died aged 78 in 2020 and had prostate cancer and advanced dementia.

His brain was diagnosed as having chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) - which can lead to dementia and is believed to be caused by repeated blows to the head.