Former Bradford and Hull striker Dean Windass admits he wishes he had not learned of his dementia diagnosis and initially did not want to speak publicly about it to protect his two footballer sons.
The 56-year-old was diagnosed with stage two dementia last January having undergone a scan following a request from John Stiles, son of the late England World Cup winner Nobby who died from the disease in 2020.
But Windass said he would have preferred not to have received his diagnosis.
Former Premier League striker Dean Windass was only 54 when he was diagnosed with stage two dementia last January. He believes it's a direct result of years spent repeatedly heading footballs.
He tells @Edballs and Ranvir about the moment he was told about his diagnosis. pic.twitter.com/7dVyu9Q9nQ
— Good Morning Britain (@GMB) April 9, 2025
“There’s a lot of footballers that won’t do it (the scan) because they don’t want to know the outcome,” he told ITV’s Good Morning Britain.
“I wish I wouldn’t have gone in now, but it’s happened. It would be better not to know.
“They said this is the diagnosis, it’s very mild. You have nothing to worry about at this stage. It could be five to 10 years that it could develop to bigger stages, so it wasn’t the news that I wanted. I was scared, of course I was.
“The reason obviously that I didn’t come out and speak about it a year and a half ago was that my eldest son is a professional footballer (Josh plays for Sheffield Wednesday) and my youngest son (Jordan) was a professional footballer but plays amateur football now.
“It’s not just football matches, it’s training every day, the repetition of heading balls everyday – I did it for 20 years. I don’t know if Josh does head it every day.
“He’s not a massive header of the ball anyway really but I said to him ‘Try not to head the ball’ but you have to in a game, of course you have.
“He scored a goal at Wembley by heading the ball. You’ve got to head it, but can you minimise it in training?”
