‘Football must do more for ex-players with dementia’
Eye of The Tigers, a column by Sam Hawcroft
A fan’s thoughts on Hull City
Well, thanks for nothing, Joe Biden.
I mean, I had a column all ready to go about the unlikely scenario of Hull City being one of the main reasons to be cheerful amid this utter bin-fire of a year, and then you go and steal my thunder.
Still, I suppose defeating Donald Trump is a bit more newsworthy than a 2-0 victory against Fleetwood Town in the first round of the FA Cup, I’ll grant you that.
Triumphs over perma-tanned tinpot dictators notwithstanding, the general thrust of what I’m saying here still stands, I think. It occurred to me recently that, for once, City were not the main cause of our existential despair.
Yes, our abject, record-breaking capitulation at the end of last season will take some forgetting; yes, it hurts that we are now in the third tier of English football while Leeds ply their trade in the Premier League.
But, y’know… we’re actually doing all right. Back in September, we knocked Leeds out of the League Cup on pens, which was nice. We’re continuing to hover around the top of the table, and we’ve set up a glamour tie with Stevenage in the second round of the FA Cup.
OK, there have been aberrations – notably against West Ham (acceptable) and Fleetwood (er, less so), but overall we’ve been pretty solid - at times exciting - and we have forwards who can score.
Local lad Keane Lewis-Potter is a source of pride. At the back, the emerging partnership between Greaves and Burke might just tighten things up further. And, as I write this, we’ve just beaten Harrogate Town 2-0 in the Papa John’s Trophy; not a sentence I ever thought I’d write, but there you are.
After the Tigers plummeted out of the Championship with all the grace of a walrus jumping off a cliff, many fans believed that Grant McCann would be swiftly shown the door.
But the Allams’ view was that, because McCann had extensive League One experience, he would be their man to lead the revival. Currently, he’s proving them right, I guess.
I’m verging on the negative here, though, and my theme was supposed to be ‘reasons to be cheerful’, remember? Well, I don’t think I was alone in fearing that there would be no ‘revival’ this season; that the downward slide would continue and we’d be candidates for relegation once again.
‘HOPING FOR A LONDON AWAY DAY SOON’: Sam’s last visit to the capital was a good one - a 3-0 win at Fulham last November
I know it’s very early days still, but my pre-season pessimism was such that I’m now eyeing up the £5 ‘wooden spoon’ slot in Andy Medcalf’s annual prediction league in aid of the RNLI. I’ve been rooted to 88th spot since the start of the season, having got the results of every match so far hilariously wrong.
Before you tweet the editors of The Hull Story to ask them why the hell I’ve been given the job of writing this column, I can only say in my defence that you had to predict all the scores, home and away, before the first ball of the 2020-21 season was kicked.
I really didn’t have time (I couldn’t be bothered) to sit down and study the recent form of all the teams in the new League One, so all I had to go on was our own form, which was, of course, very bad. As Andy has reminded me, it’s a marathon, not a sprint, but in this case I do hope I continue to be wildly wrong. (I did come second a couple of years ago, by the way.)
It is a huge shame we can’t be in the stadium to witness all of this, and we’ve already missed a few good ground ticks, but this isn’t a problem unique to Hull City.
‘Let’s face it, social distancing was going on at the KCOM long before Covid’
We’ve had the bizarre situation whereby people could book hospitality tickets to watch the match indoors, on a big screen, yards from where the real action was taking place, while fans have not been allowed to sit in the open air and be suitably distanced (and let’s face it, social distancing at the KCOM was going on way before Covid) – but this, again, is not the fault of the club, and I imagine issues surrounding distancing on the concourse, toilets, turnstiles, etc. contribute to the authorities' decision to keep matches behind closed doors.
I really hope, though, that fans will be allowed back by the end of February, when we play Wimbledon at the newly revamped Plough Lane, the club’s original home between 1912 and 1991 – not least because my brother lives in south London and it promises to be a vintage occasion, accompanied by a free overnight stay and Many Beers. Please let it happen!
Perhaps the most uplifting story during these past weeks, however, has taken place off the pitch. On October 26, Francesca Wagstaff, the daughter of City legend Ken, tweeted a GoFundMe appeal on behalf of the family of Chris Chilton, Ken’s strike partner, great friend and all-time leading City goalscorer.
‘UPLIFTING’: City legend Chris Chilton has received generous support after it was revealed he was suffering from dementia. Pictured in here in happier times on the cover of his book
Now aged 77, he suffers from dementia and needs round-the-clock professional care. His wife and children have long been at their wits’ end, and they thought an online fundraiser might be a last shot in the dark before son Gary might be forced to sell his home.
A few hundred, maybe a thousand pounds would just give them a bit of breathing space to work out what course of action to take next. They did not reckon on the huge outpouring of love and generosity from the Tiger Nation, though.
Within a week, more than £30,000 had been raised, with the help of The Decade writer Richard Gardham and a host of ex-Tigers, including Dean Windass, John Eyre and Caleb Folan, to name but a few. In the middle of a pandemic when we’re all feeling the pinch, this was just truly heartwarming.
It came in the same week as the news that Bobby Charlton had also been diagnosed with dementia, pointing up again what has been the subject of growing research; one study last year, for example, found that ex-footballers were 3.5 times more likely to suffer from dementia. Dawn Astle, daughter of West Brom legend Jeff (a contemporary of Chilton whose death, a coroner ruled, was caused by an “industrial injury”), continues to campaign for research into the issue.
Although the money raised for Chillo was incredible, it is ultimately not the answer to the problem of ensuring ex-players in his situation are not forgotten. As Francesca noted in her online appeal, Chilton “played in an era where the players were as working class as the supporters”, and he went on to be a painter and decorator after retiring from the game.
The upper echelons of football are awash with cash, but there appears to be no help for people like him. And that’s something that has to change.
Hull City as a club has taken its fair share of brickbats in recent years, but its response to the Chilton fundraiser is to be applauded – it quickly launched its ‘222 Collection’ of merchandise (named after the number of goals scored by the great no. 10), with all profits going to the appeal.
‘Something’s changed at the club for the better - the heartfelt and innovative support for Chillo would have been unthinkable not long ago’
Time was when such a heartfelt and innovative move would have been unthinkable, but something has changed. Thanks to Ben Towse [PR and social media executive] and co, there is now some genuine personality and good humour behind the club’s marketing approach and social media feeds.
It’s a long way back for Hull City, and the future may not yet be Black and Amber – but at least it’s not a Trump orange.
If you’d like to contribute to the Chris Chilton appeal, visit https://gf.me/u/y6bhq9