Further research required to establish links between football and dementia

Former Dunfermline and Aberdeen boss Jimmy Calderwood revealed on Wednesday that he has been living with the condition for two years.

He is the latest high-profile Scottish football figure to be diagnosed with dementia following the cases involving Celtic legend Billy McNeil, sixties Rangers icon Jimmy Millar and former Dundee United star Frank Kopel.

And Jim Pearson, Director of Policy and Research at Alzheimer Scotland, admits there is insufficient evidence at present to associate the game with the neurodegenerative disease.

Pearson said: “This is obviously something that is becoming more and more a common question because there are more footballers and sportspeople who are coming out and sharing their stories.

“We have worked with partners within football and the research community and we’ve looked at the current research.

“We can’t say with any confidence that there is evidence that supports this conclusion.

“The research that has been done has been insufficient, there hasn’t been a lot of research done. It is retrospective and probably lacks any robustness.

“We need to know more and learn more about it. Alzheimer Scotland is working around those issues and working with the research community, trying to build up as much robust evidence as we can before we can determine there is clear evidence between something like heading a ball and someone developing dementia.

“We don’t know if there are a higher proportion of footballers getting dementia than there are in the general population.

“That evidence doesn’t exist at the moment, although we know it is a question on everybody’s lips.

“We will work with the research community around developing better evidence.

“We also need to get better funding for development because, quite frankly, dementia is underfunded in general because we don’t know some of the causes of Alzheimer issues never mind this. There is a lot of work to be done in dementia in general.”