Alan Shearer doc about headers causing dementia tonight.

Apparently, kids at primary school don't have to head the ball nowadays from goalkicks and stuff.  In fact I think it is banned now.

Wish that was the case when I was a kid, that was the one thing I hated, used to dread the ball coming near me from a goal kick.  They were way too big and heavy for a kid under 10 to be heading after dropping from about 40 feet out of the sky. 

Still though, I don't think I've shown any signs of the old dementyas cpinhg on yit.

You know, round our parts when I were growing up a slang term for a spaz retard spacker person of limited intellect was an "'ead-the-ball". As in "Ignore him, he's a proper 'ead-the-ball". Maybe it's country-wide, I couldn't say, but it's an interesting 'coincidence'.

Anyways, I'll be watching.

Called Joey when I was a kid. Fucking unpleasant now, but we didn't know any better. And I am glad times have changed.

Similar in that instance then, but we just called them a headbanger. Don't think it was related to football though. Maybe it was?

As in "Give him a wide berth mate, he's a fucking headbanger".

One of Celtic's famous centre-forwards was Billy McPhail, who scored a hat-trick against Rangers in the legendary "Oh Hampden in the sun...." game. He was the best header of a ball that I've seen. He developed signs of Dementia in his 30s and eventually, in 1990, went to court claiming entitlement to disability payments. He lost the case. Attached is a summary from Wiki.

Health problems
According to his wife, Ophelia, McPhail discovered in the 1990s that the left hemisphere of his brain was damaged. Then aged in his 70s, he had displayed signs of dementia since his 30s, and was eventually diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease.[4] McPhail, with the support of medical specialists, associated the neurological symptoms with heading the leather football used in the 1950s, explaining how "the ball used to get very heavy when it rained – when you took that full in the forehead it nearly knocked you over."[7]
In 1999 McPhail launched a legal case claiming he was entitled to disability payments. However, an Industrial Tribunal didn't accept that a clash of heads during his playing career could have caused the dementia. The Tribunal would not consider whether heading the ball might have contributed, as it categorised that as "part of the job [as a footballer]" and not an industrial injury. The decision was upheld by the Social Security Commissioner of Scotland.[4][9]
McPhail's mental health continued to deteriorate and he died in Glasgow on 4 April 2003.