Families of former players with dementia urge PFA boss Gordon Taylor to leave and apologise for failure

Families of former players have urged the Professional Footballers’ Association to lead an urgent review of those living with dementia and immediately implement comprehensive care plans.

Following publication on Monday of research showing that former footballers were 3.5 times more likely to die from dementia, there were also renewed calls for Gordon Taylor, PFA chief executive since 1981, to step aside immediately so that a replacement could lead his organisation’s response.

Taylor is due to depart at an unspecified date, but there is deep anger and frustration at how long it has taken to produce comprehensive dementia research and the limitations in help for former players and their families.

“He should go now,” said Laraine Astle, the widow of Jeff Astle, who says she has never had a phone call from Taylor. Chris Sutton, whose own father, Mike, has dementia, believes that Taylor had failed his members and should apologise.

Rachel Taylor, whose father, Rod, last year became the second British footballer after Astle whose diagnosis of chronic traumatic encephalopathy – a type of dementia caused by head trauma – wants financial and practical help for other families.

“The absolute immediate thing to come out is an urgent review of all the players living with dementia and then a full and comprehensive care plan,” she said. “Somebody needs to apologise and mean it.”

Taylor is paid several times more each year than an annual benevolent fund of £565,000 to which families of players with dementia can apply for help towards care costs. Concerns over the funding of the PFA, including Taylor’s £2million annual earnings, are being reviewed by the Charity Commission.

Taylor did not appear at Monday’s launch of the research but has always maintained that the issue has been high on the PFA’s agenda. His deputy, Bobby Barnes, said that the organisation was funding a further three research projects.

Barnes also highlighted an inconclusive research project that began in 2001 and said the new study could only have been completed in recent years. He ignored an invitation to apologise on behalf of the PFA but outlined admiration for the Astle family. “It’s only with recent technological and medical research records that we have been able to provide the information to get the results,” he said.

Asked if more of the benevolent fund would now go to those players living with dementia, Barnes said that the PFA was financially helping families and former footballers in a range of ways through various internal funds. “We are going to spend and commit to spend whatever is necessary to support our membership,” he said.