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Outgoing PFA chief Gordon Taylor urged to increase funding for former players with dementia

Gordon Taylor  - Outgoing PFA chief Gordon Taylor urged to increase funding for former players with dementia - ACTION IMAGES
Gordon Taylor - Outgoing PFA chief Gordon Taylor urged to increase funding for former players with dementia - ACTION IMAGES

Gordon Taylor has been urged to prioritise emergency funding for families of former players with dementia during the final months of his 40-year tenure as chief executive of the Professional Footballers’ Association.

In a joint letter to the PFA’s Charity trustees, John Stiles, Chris Sutton and Dawn Astle have made an “urgent plea on behalf of former players and their families” who are in desperate need of emotional, practical and financial support.

Former professional footballers are 350 per cent more likely to die of neurodegenerative disease and, while the PFA does offer limited financial help, they have restricted and unrestricted funds totalling £63.5 million and annually receive almost £25 million from the Premier League.

The PFA did not disclose how much they spent to assist former players with dementia but said that the charity had provided over £1 million last year to players in need, whether that was people living with neurodegenerative disease or for other reasons. Taylor received more than £2 million in salary, bonus and benefits during the most recent accounting year.

In the letter to the trustees, which include Taylor as well as Brendon Batson, Darren Wilson, Garth Crooks, Gareth Griffths, Chris Powell and David Weir, the families stress that further help cannot wait until an overhaul in the PFA is complete.

The organisation is currently enacting a new structure and the positions of all the co-opted trustees are up for renewal. A new dementia advisory group is also being formed. Taylor has said that he will stand down as chief executive by the end of this current season.

John Stiles is the son of 1966 World Cup winner Nobby, who died last month after living with dementia for more than a decade. Sutton’s father, Mike, was also a professional player for Norwich and is currently in a care home and living with dementia. Astle’s father, Jeff, died in 2002 of what a coroner ruled was ‘industrial disease’ as a result of a career spent heading footballs. He was also diagnosed with dementia.

Of the many families who are currently trying to support former players with neurological disease, Stiles, Sutton and Astle wrote: “They cannot afford to wait for the appointment of a new chief executive and the creation of a new governance structure. Because of our dads’ illnesses, we know exactly what these families are going through. It is a dreadful experience.

“It is obvious that helping ex-professionals and their families must now become an integral party of the PFA’s future strategy. However ex-players and their families cannot wait. We urge and implore the trustees to act now, with urgency, in making immediately available some of the charty’s extensive funding such that today’s urgent cases are addressed with real help, not token gestures.”

The PFA Charity said that it was “committed to supporting former players, and their families, who are dealing with dementia or any other neurodegenerative condition”. It said that its support, which it did not precisely quantify, “includes financial assistance towards provisions such as home improvements, respite care, independent benefits advice, counselling provisions for family members and help with care costs”.

Sports Briefing
Sports Briefing