Dean Windass: Former Hull City star diagnosed with dementia as campaigners push for more help for footballers with disease

The 55-year-old’s stage two dementia diagnosis was revealed by former Manchester United defender David May during a BBC Breakfast interview. He later told followers on X (formerly Twitter) that Windass had given him permission to speak about his diagnosis publicly.

Breaking his silence on the issue, Windass also took to social media to say that he had been diagnosed last year. He joked with fans that he was “delighted to find out I had a brain”, adding that he wanted “other families get the help what they want for the people they have lost”.

He told The Mirror: “My phone has gone mad because everyone thinks I’m dying. I’m not dying. I’m all right. I’m honestly fine. I’m not dying. I could walk out my front door and get run over. People don’t need to worry about me, it’s fine.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen in five years or tomorrow. I just get on with it. “

Windass’s career saw him spend time at club such as Hull City, Aberdeen, Bradford City and Middlesbrough. The most notable moment of his career came in 2008, during his second stint at Hull City, when he scored the only goal in the Championship play-off final to lift the team into the Premier League for the first in the the club’s history.

With 634 appearance under his belt, Windass retired from his senior playing career in 2009. His diagnosis revelation comes as campaigners urge more support and awareness of the disease within the sport.

The 2019 FIELD study, co-funded by The Football Association and the Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA), found that footballers were three-and-a-half times more likely to die of a neurodegenerative disease than age-matched members of the population

Football Families for Justice held an event in Manchester on Friday (January 10) supported by David Beckham, Beckham told attendees he was supporting the campaign after three of his former Manchester United mentors - Sir Bobby Charlton, Nobby Stiles and Eric Harrison - all died of neurological diseases.

The event was also supported by Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham. He said: “You always have to fight hard to correct injustice, and I do think this is an injustice.

“People hear the word ‘footballer’ today and it conjures up a certain kind of person, lifestyle, car, all the rest of it. These were people who played the game in the 50s, the 60s, the 70s, the 80s. It was a very different game in those days, but they built it into this multi-billion pound industry that it is today.

“When anything involves money, it involves a fight often. But I know football well. I know there are fundamentally decent people throughout football at every single level, and I would go as far as to say 99 per cent of them would say, ‘Yeah, hang on a minute, more needs to be done’.”