Former Cardiff and Barry Town stalwart died from playing career head injuries

Glamorgan Star news 21/05/2022

5 minutes read

Keith Pontin joined Barry Town after his Cardiff City days.

By MARCUS STEAD

SPORT | Football

A Coronor has concluded that former Barry Town and Wales defender Keith Pontin died of dementia caused by repeated trauma to the head sustained during his playing career.

Mr Pontin died in August 2020 at the age of 64, five years after being diagnosed with dementia.

Delivering a narrative conclusion, coroner David Regan gave Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) as the cause of death.

CTE is a progressive brain condition, thought to be caused by repeated blows to the head and episodes of concussion.

Mr Pontin was a stalwart of the Cardiff City team between 1976-83, and after two years at Merthyr Tydfil he moved to Barry Town in 1985, where he helped the Jenner Park side to three Welsh League titles and a Welsh League Cup before hanging up his boots in 1993.

David Cole, representing Barry Town United, told the hearing Mr Pontin’s was “An old-fashioned competitive centre-half who dominated the ball in the air,” but that he was “a gentle giant off the field”.

Mr Cole said the current incarnation of the club, founded in 2013, holds no records of the former Barry Town for which Mr Pontin played.

Dr William Stewart, a diagnostic neuropathologist, told the inquest that during the post-mortem he found extensive evidence throughout Mr Pontin’s brain of Tau proteins which he said was in an “abnormal pattern entirely stereotypical of CTE” and that, “This distribution is related uniquely to head injury and impact.”

CTE was previously known as ‘punch-drunk’ syndrome and dementia pugilistica, but these terms are no longer used because it’s now known that the condition is not limited to ex-boxers.

Dr Stewart told the inquest that professional footballers and rugby players are three-and-a-half times more likely to develop dementia than the general population.

When asked whether Mr Pontin died from Alzheimer’s disease or dementia, Dr Stewart said: “It’s a very imprecise term…CTE is his precise form of dementia. He didn’t have Alzheimer’s disease.”

Delivering his concluding remarks, Mr Regan said: “I’m entirely satisfied on the balance of probability that the cause of death is Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy.

“The evidence that has been provided to me is that neuropathological condition evidenced by an examination of Keith’s brain only occurs in instances of repeated head injury.

“I have evidence from those who saw Keith playing that he suffered repeated head contact with the ball and also suffered head injuries during his play. I have no evidence that he suffered head trauma at any other stage in his life.

“It seems to me on the balance of probabilities, having found Keith had repeated head contact with the ball, I’m driven to the conclusion it more than minimally, negligibly or trivially contributed to his death.

“I’m entirely satisfied that the cause of his Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy occurred as a result of his professional footballing career.

“None of that identifies breach of duty in any way which is not a matter for the coroner’s court. The cause of death is an unnatural one.

“I return a narrative conclusion, which reads that Keith Pontin died of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, caused by repetitive head injury suffered as a professional footballer.”

Concern over the long-term impact of heading footballs came into the forefront following the death of former England international Jeff Astle in 2002 at the age of just 59.

Mr Astle, an exceptional header of the ball, was part of the England squad at the 1970 World Cup and during the 1990s he became well-known for his appearances on comedy programme Fantasy Football League, but on 19 January 2002 he choked to death at his daughter’s home.

His cause of death was a degenerative brain disease that had first become apparent as much as five years earlier.

In 2014, the same Dr Stewart who worked on Mr Pontin’s post-mortem carried out a new examination on Mr Astle’s brain and concluded that he had died from CTE.

The following year, the Jeff Astle Foundation was launched to raise awareness of brain injury in all sports, and two years later, former England striker Alan Shearer presented a BBC documentary on the subject in which Mr Astle’s daughter Dawn spoke of the deterioration in her father’s condition during the years before his death.

Five members of the England team that won the World Cup in 1966 have developed dementia, leading to the deaths of four of them.

Left-back Ray Wilson was the first to succumb in July 2018, which was followed by Martin Peters’s death from the illness at the end of 2019.

Jack Charlton’s battle with dementia was the subject of a moving documentary that was released several months after his death in July 2020.

Nobby Stiles died from dementia in October 2020, and a month later it was announced that Jack’s brother Sir Bobby Charlton was also suffering from the condition. Last summer, his former Manchester United teammate Denis Law released a statement in which he revealed that he, too had been diagnosed with dementia.

Last November, former Cardiff City manager Frank Burrows died following a battle with dementia at the age of 77.

While footballs used during the 1950s and 60s were considerably heavier (particularly in wet conditions) than those used in the modern era, concerns about the long-term impact of heading footballs remain.

Younger ex-footballers suffering from early-onset dementia include maverick Queens Park Rangers forward Stan Bowles, who was diagnosed in 2013 at the age of 64, while former Spurs defender and Wimbledon manager Joe Kinnear was given the diagnosis in 2015 aged 68.

In October last year, Terry Butcher, captain of England during the 1990 World Cup, called for heading to be phased out of the game, but conceded that it would have to be done gradually.

Rugby union has changed massively since the game turned professional in 1995, with a substantial increase in the average weight of the players, which, combined with far more tackles per game, many of which are full-on body collisions, has led to concerns over the impact the game is having on the long-term health of players.

A study published in the BMJ Open Sport and Exercise Medicine journal revealed that the mean body mass of international rugby union players rose from 84.8kg in 1995 to 105.4kg in 2015, marking an increase of 24.3%.

The average weight of an England player in 1994 was 92.4kg, but by 2014 that had risen to 105.1kg, and similar increases be found across all major Test playing nations.

At the 2015 Rugby World Cup, the Welsh backs in Warren Gatland’s side had the potential to be heavier on average than the New Zealand forwards of which he was a part in the 1987 tournament.

In December 2020, former Wales number eight Alix Popham revealed he had been diagnosed with early-onset dementia and probable chronic traumatic encephalopathy (‘probable’ because the diagnosis can only be confirmed during a post-mortem) at the age of just 40.

Since his diagnosis, he has helped to launch a lobby group, Progressive Rugby, who have drawn together experts to establish ways to improve player safety, and he has also set up a foundation, Head For Change, which supports individuals affected and their families.

Other well-known rugby union players who have made their early-onset dementia diagnosis public in recent years include former England flanker Michael Lipman, Steve Thompson, who was part of the England side that won the Rugby World Cup in 2003 but now cannot remember it, and former New Zealand prop Carl Hayman, who revealed last November he had been diagnosed with the condition at the age of 41.

🌟 This article first appeared in the printed edition of the Glamorgan Star on 19.05.22.