From the Archive: Football's uncomfortable heading conversation

From this week on Monday and Tuesday nights, paid subscribers will get a selection from my archive which I feel remains pertient today. This evening, heading the ball.

The decade has seen football trying to come to terms with the possibility of a horror that has been hiding in plain sight for as long as people have been playing the game. The deaths of Jack Charlton, Nobby Stiles and Maurice Setters in recent years, all of whom died with dementia (and among many others), have thrown a conversation that many parts of the game seem to have been shying away from in recent years into the limelight. Could it be that the link between heading footballs and developing dementia later in life could eventually result in changes to the game more profound than anything  rich club owners could wreak upon it?