Seeking help from the Professional Footballers’ Association still seems a bleak prospect for the families of players who brought joy to many of us and who are now living with dementia.
Chris Nicholl’s family had found the process desperately difficult before his death last month. Tony Parkes’ daughter has stopped asking the union for help.
Mike Lyons’ daughter was told she would be of no use if she brought him home from Australia to live near her in her beloved Merseyside.
Former Manchester United player David May described last week how a member of one of his WhatsApp groups had to sell his house to fund dementia care for a former player. Another is transferred to another residence because his family cannot afford the expenses.
None of these families want a scandal. They are too busy with the relentless daily struggle that comes with a dementia diagnosis.
The family of former Aston Villa star Chris Nicholl (pictured) tried to get help from the Professional Footballers’ Association before he died last year following a battle with dementia.
Tony Parkes’ daughter (above) has given up hope of asking the PFA for help and support.
The daughter of former Everton captain Mick Lyons (pictured together in Perth) has been told the 72-year-old will not receive help if he is brought back to the UK from Australia.
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I will never forget Rob Stiles, Nobby’s son, telling me about the devastating little indignities of his mother’s search for help from the PFA, and then calling me a day later to ask that certain facts be excluded, to avoid causing offence. What incredible dignity!
In these circumstances, the latest role assumed by Maheta Molango, executive director of the PFA, is, to say the least, unfortunate.
Molango will join Sampdoria’s board of directors, although you would have to follow the Italian club’s own media or the dark corners of the Italian sports press to find out. This news, announced by the club last week, comes four months after the PFA said it would give Molango a retroactive £150,000 pay rise, taking his salary to £650,000, due to the cost of living crisis.
It has been impossible to extract from Italy any idea of how much Molango will earn in the new role and the answers to that question are loaded with comments about second division Sampdoria not being rich and that Molango joined because he was a childhood fan. The PFA says this is a “light” non-executive role from which you will earn “core costs and expenses”.
But the salary is not the point. The highly paid union boss, whose position at the PFA also saw him join the board of global players’ union FIFPRO, becomes part of the executive role of a club whose players he supposedly represents.
Molango’s predecessor at the PFA, Gordon Taylor, certainly had his flaws, including a grotesque £2m annual salary, but it is fair to say he would have been annihilated for taking up a role on any club’s board.
PFA chief executive Maheta Molango (pictured) will receive a £150,000 retroactive pay rise
Former PFA chief executive Gordon Taylor (pictured in 2021) had a grotesque salary of £2m a year but would have been criticized if he had taken a role in a club boardroom.
The PFA says Molango “consulted the PFA operational board before taking office” and that if any conflict of interest arose in the future, he would recuse himself.
But it’s not a good look after that pay rise and the union’s current need to demonstrate that every minute of its work is intended to make up for how dementia among its members was scandalously ignored for so long.
The PFA has been running a new £1 million fund for former footballers living with illnesses for six months, to which it has committed £250,000, and at an operational level, that cash is really making a difference.
The involvement of Dawn Astle, the extraordinary activist who brought to light the link between football and dementia, was astute. The new pot of money means families are getting help like never before. Occupational therapists sent to assess the needs of former players will find that in some cases they need more support than they actually request.
But this is not a simple operational job. Dozens of families describe to me their confusion about what they might be entitled to, their disappointment that, in their own minds, there may be no help for them, and their anger at the detailed picture they are being asked to provide of their finances.
This is a huge communication challenge that requires immense leadership. We have heard little from Molango on the matter, beyond an interview a few years ago in which he said that he had learned from others about this topic and had committed to donating his brain for research.
Molango should speak to the families of people like former Everton star Lyons (pictured)
Parkes (right), a much-loved assistant to Graeme Souness in Blackburn, has had a tough few years since his dementia diagnosis.
Maybe you could talk to some of these families. People like Francesca Lyons, Mike’s daughter, who flew to Australia last year to bring the legendary former Everton player back to Merseyside for “one last time”, as she puts it.
The trip, paid for by the late Bill Kenwright, took Mike back to old familiar haunts, including his beloved Goodison Park. “That changed him,” he tells me. “He was more himself again.” And that made her even more regretful that there was no way football could help her bring him back for good. ‘It made me think: “What if?” she says.
The difficult final years of Parkes, the much-loved former Blackburn Rovers assistant manager, are told in a beautiful biography written by journalist Suzanne Geldard. Parkes’ daughter Natalie describes “just going in circles with the PFA”, an organization that actually found more support when Taylor, a former Rovers player, was at the helm. “You could make him laugh before, but now you can’t,” Natalie said of her father. “The disease, whatever the manifestation of it, has done it.”
The testimonies are heartbreaking. They reveal to Molango and anyone who cares to listen that this challenge is a full-time job, with monumental work to be done for these legends of our sport, while we still have them with us.
Boyce brings joy to Cardiff
A day from heaven in Cardiff on Sunday, watching Wales play bravely for an hour before France prevailed in the Six Nations.
There were men dressed as frogs and Eiffel Towers prancing along St Mary’s Street near the castle. There was my momentary irritation with an advert saying: “When delivery matters, it’s got to be Royal Mail”, flashing around the stadium. An investment of £11 to send my lovely mother’s Mother’s Day card in a special delivery and it still hadn’t arrived on time.
Max Boyce (pictured) was in his element as he entertained the crowd ahead of last weekend’s entertaining Six Nations clash between Wales and France at the Principality Stadium.
And then there was Max Boyce, a legend on these occasions, taking advantage of the decision to remove ‘Delilah’ from the stadium canon for politically correct reasons, and shedding some light on the moral panic over two opponents who played in green and red. Wales against Ireland, red plays with green, which is a problem for the color blind.
No offense was intended. He wasn’t offended. Proof that when you deliver with wit, charm, and that smile of his, you can tackle almost any topic without fear of cancellation.
FA implements ‘applause only’ rule
I hope Christine Benneworth has done a better job than me of adhering to the FA’s recent “applause only” rules.
Charles, 6, plays every weekend and recently received the player of the match award.
Her photo, here, of six-year-old Charles, her great-grandson, whom she loyally supports, is another of many she has sent.
‘He played every weekend when he was six years old. Last Sunday’s player of the game,” Christine proudly reports.