Mike Edwards on why football authorities must ban heading

The other night my front room was a scramble of cables and dollies and lights as a crew from Belgian TV turned up. They were making a documentary about the prevalence of dementia among former footballers and had tracked me down via my lobby group, Heading Out.

I am trying to persuade FIFA to change the rules of the game and remove heading the ball to protect players – especially children.

Knowing no Flemish, I attempted to do the interview in French. But the reporter politely asked me to start again in my mother tongue. Nonplussed, I did so, and made a mental note to seek out conversational French classes to plumpen my once handy knowledge of the language.

The premise of the documentary was that, like Britain, Belgium has noted a cohort of former professional players who died young from dementia. I wasted no time in delivering my key message that the game has to change, that FIFA has a duty of care to players and must remove heading. The game is football, not headball, after all.

They de-rigged and departed and we promised to keep in touch. Sadly I was first to reach out, and not with some chirpy French comment I had carefully checked grammatically on an online translator.

Instead it was to tell them that another two British ex-professionals, Stan Bowles and Chris Nicholl, had both died at the weekend after dementia diagnoses.

Nicholl had often said he blamed his dementia on heading the ball. So if the players themselves are saying it, then it reinforces the view that something must be done.

It is desperate that the beautiful game can kill. It has to change, and soon.

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There is a phrase my Granny used, and as a child it subconsciously became part of my own lexicon.

It went along the lines of whether or not I thought she had come up the Clyde on a tea biscuit.

This pronouncement usually followed my attempt at a wind-up or practical joke, and because she was sharp as a tack to the end, she had clearly never transited the river that launched a thousand ships on any form of dry baked product.

To be honest, as an Edwardian, I’m pretty sure she never flew either, so the chances of her going to Glasgow Airport were just as slim. But if she was around today to use the edifice, you’d better stand by for another bucketful of her sayings.

Airport management would be called "sleekit" for taking advantage of a captive audience by increasing the pick up and drop off fees by a scandalous 50p from an already hideous £5. That policy would be "ripping the knitting", in her nomenclature.

Don’t worry, Granny, they’ll not get me. I’m far too thrawn. If I am using the airport, and I always try to take the train instead, because there are seldom any flies on me, I make sure I get dropped off outside the car park and, luggage or not, fair weather or foul, day or night, walk in to avoid being fleeced by your so-called masked stripey jumper-wearers.

As you used to say, they’ll have to get up very early in the morning to get one over on me.