Mike Amos

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A Footballer's Story of Life, Love and Brain Injury

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

"A heart-breaking but still inspiring insight into the real-life impact of the biggest issue facing the world's biggest sport."Jeremy Wilson, Chief Sports Reporter, The Telegraph 'It is beautifully written, immaculately researched and pulls no punches.' Ian Herbert, Daily Mail This is the story of the 'real' Bill Gates. A famous footballer, a successful millionaire and a global philanthropist. This is the story of an incredible man and his remarkable wife, who in his final years made a commitment to use his brain to save the next generation of football players. Bill was Britain's first £50 a week teenage superstar who played 333 games for Middlesbrough, where he was the PFA representative. He was the first entrepreneur/businessman to make sports shops the centre of high-street fashion. He was a philanthropist who travelled the world using football to change the lives of millions of children in over 100 countries. But in 2017 his life changed when he was diagnosed with football's best-kept secret, probable Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, caused by repetitive head impacts including headers, a brain disease with no cure. Author Mike Amos perfectly captures the incredible life of Bill and Judith, from a coal mining village in Ferryhill in the 1950s, a brilliant 13-year professional career in the 60s and 70s, a chain of sports shops in the 80s, to a millionaire's lifestyle on 7 mile beach on Grand Cayman in the 90s, to their most difficult journey together to ensure the future of the beautiful game. He shares Judith's work, designing the Billion Pound Game of Football that captured the attention of media around the globe and highlighted the need for changes in sport. Their ground-breaking Head Safe Football charity has led to research and education, and supported families of players with CTE. Designed to protect the future of the game, Head Safe Football educates players, coaches, sports scientists, and parents to recognise that CTE begins in young footballers and can be prevented with common sense Head Safe Football policies and training. No-Brainer explains how one man and his family have galvanised the football world around facts and science to impact player care and child safeguarding policies for both males and females. If you have ever headed a football, if your child or grandchild are heading footballs, then this is the one book that you need to read. Reviews "A heart-breaking but still inspiring insight into the real-life impact of the biggest issue facing the world's biggest sport. But does football care enough about its former heroes to take sufficient action?" Jeremy Wilson, Chief Sports Reporter, The Telegraph "What a brilliant read. Took me through every emotion from laughing and smiling to tears of true sadness. A great insight into the dark and oh so sad side of the beautiful game. A must-read, not only for the light-hearted reminiscing of football anecdotes and memories, but to learn the startling truth behind a game touching so many lives, and the devastation it can cause." Hilary Maddren, widow of Willie Maddren, Middlesbrough player and manager who died of neurodegenerative disease "Not just an important read for football fans, but for anyone whose life has been touched by the slowly unfolding despair of dementia." Harry Pearson, author of The Far Corner "No Brainer is a meticulous and moving read that exposes the cost of football's collective failure to protect players. One day, football will thank women like Dr Judith Gates who fought to spare future generations the pain they suffered as they watched their loved ones slowly succumb to diseases like CTE." Warren Manger, Daily Mirror "Bill and Judith Gates are the opposites who stayed attracted for more than 60 years together, but both in their very different ways have become titans in the world of football.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Haythorp Books
• Seitenzahl: 336
• Erscheinungstermin: 25. April 2024
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781914487248
• Artikelnr.: 69962699

Autorenporträt

Mike Amos was for 55 years a journalist in north-east England, almost entirely on The Northern Echo, until made redundant at the age of 73. He has won more than 40 journalism awards, was named North-East Journalist of the Year seven times in 18 years, was an inaugural inductee in the Provincial Journalism Hall of Fame and in 2006 was appointed MBE for services to journalism. Born in Shildon, Co Durham, where he served as local councillor, churchwarden and parish magazine editor, he retains a lifelong passion for Shildon FC but worries over where allegiance might lie should they ever draw his other favoured club, Arsenal. For 20 years until 2016 he was chairman of the Northern Football League, the world's second oldest, and has written or edited several books about the league. Other books include Unconsidered Trifles, a 400-page memoir of life as a "jobbing journalist."

Inhaltsangabe

Foreword
1. ‘It was many years before I could properly enjoy a gin and tonic’
2. ‘I want to tell them there’s a ticking time bomb. As you are, once was
Bill’
3. ‘A rugged centre half who wouldn’t flinch at a head-on meeting with
Cassius Clay, if he was wearing a No 9 shirt’
4. ‘There are lots of opportunities in life. Some people take them and some
people don’t’
5. ‘The authorities don’t seem prepared to admit the scale of the problem.
People like my dad loved football, and it’s killing them’
6. 'When it all comes out, what has happened in football will be seen as a
scandal worse than Savile, worse than Grenfell Tower, worse than Windrush'
7. ‘My mum knows nothing about football but she is the most dangerous woman
in the game’
8. ‘Judith’s formidable, that’s the word. She’s driven, and she’s not going
to let it go now’
9. ‘I knew there wouldn’t be conversations, I’d no illusions about that,
but in many ways he wasn’t my dad’
10. ‘He didn’t need much persuading. I think the quid pro quo was a small
box of Milk Tray’
11. ‘I spent the night in Middlesbrough hospital. It went on like that for
two days and they had me training again on the third’
12. ‘This disease tests your kindness. It tests your patience. It tests
your family. It tests everything except your love. But the more you love,
the more your heart breaks’
13. ‘The brutal truth is that there aren’t enough people suffering from MND
to make research a good investment for drug companies’
14. ‘If you got a bad concussion, stumbling around a bit, it was regarded
as a joke and played afterwards on the videotape, so everyone could have a
good laugh'
15. ‘My dad was always very supportive of the PFA, but I think they’ve
failed families and football participants in general’
16. ‘People would cross the road to avoid you, even in Middlesbrough’
17. ‘I’ve been in board rooms full of people from Oxford and Cambridge and
always had the advantage of them, because I was from Co Durham’
18. ‘I really care about finding the answer, but I don’t want to come
across as a saint’
19. ‘I remember (down the pit) they used to call the daft lads the
heedybaals. A bit late, but it all starts to make sense’
20. ‘It very much reminds me of the smoking debate. Everyone knows that
it’s wrong, unwise, but no one seems to do much’
21. ‘The Concussion in Sport Group has controlled the narrative for 20
years, and it has come to this’
22. ‘How pathetic that 30 former footballers are to sue the Football
Association over negligence. . . . ’
23. ‘If this was the shipyards, I’m talking about asbestos, the trade
unions would be calling them out because of the risk to their health’
24. ‘We would have expected the Football Association to have been publicly
hounded by the Professional Footballers’ Association. . . ’
25. ‘I truly believe that this is the beginning of the end. It’s exciting
to think that we will soon have life-saving treatments to tackle this
disease’
26. ‘Various failings over a prolonged period of time’
27. ‘Certainly there seems to be recent history between Head for Change and
the PFA'
28. ‘We’ve had the agitations and the obsessions. Now he’s happy and safe.
That’s such a relief to us all’
29. ‘The conversations they’re having in rugby they were having in boxing
100 years ago’
30. ‘It’s a space where we can say what we want without judgement. We don’t
have to be good girls being brave’
31. ‘It’s so sad that football was his passion and is now the cause of his
demise’
32. ‘There is a fundamental issue if players, unions and leagues feel that
lawmakers are holding them back from what they collectively agree to
protect the safety of players’
33. ‘Head for Change is doing what the wealthy Players’ Foundation refuses
to do’
34. ‘There is a remarkable consistency of symptoms across all these contact
sports, and it is very grim’
35. ‘We appreciate the invitation to take part in the book, however we
would politely have to decline on this occasion’
36. ‘After years of political wrangling, England’s football authorities are
close to agreeing a deal to establish a Dementia Care Fund to help former
players’
37. ‘He wanted no one else from Ferryhill, from Spennymoor, from the whole
world to suffer as he was suffering’
38. ‘Another cliché –sorry — we can only play the hand we’re dealt’
39. ‘We are a charity for everyone — all ages, genders, players at every
level’
40. 'It’s hard to envisage our authorities allowing our sportsmen and women
play what seems designed to hasten the onset of dementia’