Braveheart Colin Hendry ’s swashbuckling Scotland performances during the 1990s won the respect of fans around the world.
The central defender – who captained the 1998 World Cup squad – would time and again rise to the most brutal of aerial challenges to head the ball clear.
The do-or-die sportsman famously played on for Blackburn Rovers with blood pouring from a bandaged head wound during a Premiership clash with Arsenal.
Giving all for club and country should not, however, have to extend to suffering long-term brain damage – and that is what the 55-year-old ex-player now fears could be his fate.
Hendry believes heading the ball hundreds of times a week could have left him facing dementia in old age.
He has become the first former professional to sign up to a groundbreaking study to find out his fate.
PFA Scotland’s new PREVENT Dementia scheme will see participants undergo a series of tests to investigate links between football and brain health.
The organisation – a trade union for players – deserves praise for investing in the research, and Hendry deserves praise for bravely agreeing to take part.
The Sunday Mail, along with Alzheimer Scotland, launched a fundraising drive in 2017 for dementia research in the name of Lisbon Lion Billy McNeill.
He passed away in 2019 after being diagnosed with the condition.
And last year, the SFA banned heading the ball in training for Under-12s after a campaign by this paper.
Footballing authorities can no longer ignore the mounting evidence there could be ugly consequences to playing the
beautiful game.
It will never be possible to eradicate the risk of injury from sport.
But the lives of young players desperate to prove themselves the next Braveheart shouldn’t be put needlessly at risk.
Capitalise on the chaos, Keir
The stench of sleaze around Boris Johnson’s Tory party is growing by the day.
From paid lobbying, to Covid contracts for donors, to peerages for sale, to the Prime
Minister’s financing of wallpaper for his own flat, the scandals keep on coming.
Now Scottish Conservatives leader Douglas Ross has admitted failing to properly declare thousands of pounds earned as a football referee.
Ross may well have made a simple mistake but a new opinion poll suggests voters have had enough and Labour are six points ahead.
If opposition leader Keir Starmer can’t now capitalise on the chaos and establish a sustained lead, it is likely to be his job rather than Johnson’s at risk.
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