You only had to witness Gordon McQueen’s daughters, standing in the biting cold outside the North Yorkshire Coroners’ Court on Monday, to know why they had spent the best part of three years trying to get to the truth behind their father’s death.
A coroner had just concluded that the former Leeds United and Manchester United centre half had lost his life in part because of the repeated blows he had sustained to his head as a combative defender.
It was because of the shocking sense of diminishment they had seen in him – the terrible decline of a man who was essentially brain damaged – that Hayley McQueen and Anna Forbes were there, trying to make themselves heard above the noise of traffic, pleading with the football authorities to protect today’s players in a way their father had not been in an era of poorer medical understanding.
‘Our dad loved everything about football but it took his life in the end,’ Hayley McQueen told us. ‘He went through a terrible time towards the end of his life. If he were here today, his message would have been to teach future generations.’
Many families of former players have felt the same urgency and distress these past five or 10 years, as the number of players succumbing to this slow and distressing form of death has created an incontrovertible link between repeated heading of a ball and brain disease.
McQueen was barely 60 – a relatively young man – when his cognitive function began to unravel. Take your pick of similar cohorts. The Liverpool team of the 1970s is another from which too many have been cut down in this way. It took a deep toll on England’s World Cup winning team – the Charlton brothers, Nobby Stiles, Ray Wilson, Martin Peters, Roger Hunt and others.
Gordon McQueen’s daughters, Anna (left) and Hayley, talk to reporters outside the North Yorkshire Coroners’ Court on Monday having won the fight to expose the truth of their father’s death. But the PFA and FA were conspicuous by their absence
A coroner concluded that the former Manchester United defender had lost his life in part because of the repeated blows he had sustained to his head as a combative centre half
McQueen was barely 60 – a relatively young man – when his cognitive function began to unravel
So the real disgrace on Monday was the utter absence of support for the McQueen sisters from the Professional Footballers’ Association or the Football Association, whose executives are being extremely well paid to govern the game.
Had McQueen been a steelworker or a coal miner, killed by an industrial disease in this way, then his union leaders would have been there, showing support and vowing to move heaven and earth to support and protect people and ensure that this death would not be in vain.
The PFA were conspicuous by their absence on the court steps, just as they had been when the McQueens first sought help from the union their father paid into for years, at a time when he was suffering. The email Anna Forbes sent to the PFA at their elegant Manchester offices, pleading for help, was not even answered. ‘They sent me on a wild goose chase. The PFA gave us no support – nothing whatsoever.’
The arrival at the PFA of Dawn Astle, the campaigner who brought the link between football and dementia out into the light after her father Jeff’s death, has helped. Yet families trying to get help from the union still describe to me their confusion and disappointment.
Where, in all of this, is the voice of Maheta Molango, the union’s very highly remunerated chief executive?
Anna’s words damned the union, yet there was not so much as an apology for the distress she felt. Just a barely printable statement declaring the ‘ongoing need for a collective response’ and associated meaningless nonsense.
And then we have the FA, whose legalistic approach to the McQueen case at the second pre-inquest review, at which they sought medical information on the deceased, left Hayley McQueen feeling in need of legal representation. The McQueen family have no wish for financial gain – yet they have been left feeling that the FA are their courtroom adversaries.
It has been left to the families – the real heroes in this story – to do all the hard yards in educating younger generations about the dangers of over exposure to heading. And to dispel the flawed idea that this is a historic problem about players heading the old rain-soaked balls, when the modern football, hit at a far greater velocity, very much poses the same problem.
It has been left to the families of the deceased to do all the hard yards in educating younger generations about the dangers of over exposure to heading. And to dispel the flawed idea that this is a historic problem about players heading the old rain-soaked balls
‘People will say, “You’ll ruin the game if you take heading out of it”,’ Hayley McQueen says. ‘You can still have heading, but make it safer. It’s a beautiful sport – but it doesn’t have to take its players lives’
At the vanguard is the Head Safe Football organisation (HSF), led by Judith Gates, whose footballer husband Bill died in 2023 after living with the same CTE as McQueen. HSF is the organisation promoting a reduction of the frequency of heading in training, and issuing the clarion call about CTE to players, parents and coaches.
That it begins in youth, develops silently over many years and can affect players from grassroots through to the professional game, wherever repetitive head impacts occur.
Judith Gates believes a forthcoming inquest into her husband’s death will also help promote the message and spread understanding. At a pre-inquest review, the FA employed lawyers to argue that the inquest was not in the public interest and tried to get it kicked out. The Durham coroner dismissed this suggestion.
Outside the court on Monday, Hayley McQueen pleaded with all those who love football to understand that she and others like her were not trying to get heading banned from the game. ‘People will say, “You’ll ruin the game if you take heading out of it,”’ she said. ‘You can still have heading, but make it safer. It’s a beautiful sport – but it doesn’t have to take its players lives.’
