Pride of Birmingham Awards
Daughter of West Brom legend Jeff Astle is the driving force behind the campaign to raise awareness of the risk of brain injuries in sport.
Former West Brom and England striker Jeff, who scored the winning goal in the 1968 FA Cup Final, was 59 when he died in 2002 from early onset dementia. A post mortem revealed he had suffered brain injuries caused by heading footballs and the coroner gave the cause of death as ‘industrial disease’.
Dawn, 55, started campaigning on the issue and put pressure on the FA to carry out research into head injuries suffered by players, including members of England’s 1966 World Cup winning team who suffered dementia believed to have been caused by heading the ball.
Dawn launched the Jeff Astle Foundation in 2015 to raise awareness of brain injury in sport and to offer support to those affected. The Foundation has identified more than 600 footballers who have been diagnosed with dementia and supported 200 families of former players living with dementia.
The campaign had a major breakthrough when the FA and PFA announced plans to commission an investigation in 2017. Their findings revealed former footballers are three and a half times more likely to die from neurodegenerative disease. The FA has since introduced new concussion protocols and banned children under 12 from heading the ball in training. Dawn said: “I can’t believe it took 20 years to start making the game safer when footballers are dying. Nothing would have happened if we hadn’t kicked up a fuss.”
Last February Dawn agreed to lead a dedicated dementia department at the PFA as part of the union’s push to ensure support for former players with neurodegenerative diseases is “a top priority”.