In Bristol, Ian Alexander is a footballing legend.
Recognised in the shops – remembered as a stalwart for Rovers, winning the third-tier title and reaching a Wembley final for lower-league clubs in 1990.
He was never nationally famous, but like so many in the game, he was playing for the love of it rather than becoming a millionaire.
But the memories are fading and muddled for the 62-year-old. Not just forgetting those he played with or against. But, at times, unable to even remember to use a fork to eat.
Suspected chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) is blamed – a brain condition linked to repeated blows to the head that can only be definitely diagnosed when the brain is analysed after death.
“We are football addicts, footballers,” Alexander told Sky News.
“I don’t know about the damage it does, and it’s the damage from collisions, headers and stuff you don’t know about when you play football.”
Now the hope is the High Court uncovers how much football should be blamed.
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Alexander is among more than 30 former players and their families taking legal action against the sport’s authorities, including the Football Association.
How much were they aware going back decades of the long-term damage caused by repeated blows to the head, concussions and repetitive heading, particularly in training?
Finding out the answer is dragging on. A year after the first hearing, they were back in court today in central London, to hear of more delays, more obstacles being put in their way by the sport’s governing body.
Martin Porter KC, representing the FA, claimed there was a lack of clear direction in the case to narrow down what is being sought from a “shed loads of documents” held by such a “venerable organisation”.
“We are in the middle of a football season, it is a very difficult time, a busy time,” Mr Porter said. “We would be putting a lot of demands on our clients to uncover information.”
That prompted an irritated response from Shaman Kapoor, the barrister representing the former players, pointing out the FA executives are not the ones playing.
We did hear the initial hint of a defence by the FA, among procedural legal arguments, highlighting health benefits of playing.
“Nobody can play sport without some risk of injury,” Mr Porter said. “Are we to discourage the playing of sport?”
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But central to the case will be whether anything can be found in the FA archives going back to the 1950s showing, for example, if there was scientific evidence to show heading should have been reduced or removed from the game entirely.
The parties are due back in court in June. But Mr Kapoor became increasingly exacerbated and told the court: “The idea has been to ambush the progress of this litigation”.
For Alexander and wife Janet, the slow pace of the case is infuriating.
“Why don’t you just get the case going? Get to the bottom of it and let us get on with the rest of our life,” he said.
It is the feeling of justice, not fortunes, they seek, but enough compensation for treatment and to enjoy the life he has left.
“The professor said from your age and your symptoms and stuff, he reckons I’ve got between two and six years,” Alexander said.
“So I’ve got the back of my head. That’s what I’ve got left. And that was a year ago.” Anxiety attacks make even going to football now a struggle.
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Nothing extravagant is planned, just hoping for a caravan strip around his homeland in Scotland. And more trips to neurological experts to discover just what is wrong with his brain and whether football caused it.
A tattoo inked on his left arm reads: “The mind may not remember, but the heart will never forget.”
The hope is football does not forget, with former Leeds player John Stiles leading the lobbying of the government for the football’s looming independent regulator to have powers over the long-term impact of head injuries.
The concern is of a widespread brain disease epidemic in the game and not enough being done to help the victims.
“Would you go back and do it again? My answer would be yes,” Alexander said. “I wouldn’t have changed anything in my life.
“Football was my life. I had great times.”
He just wishes it could have been safer. But whether football authorities neglected his, and other players’ health, is a matter a judge could end up determining.
