Gary Pallister discusses the headaches that plagued his football career

“I was playing for Billingham Town Juniors, as well as a team called United Biscuits from Billingham, that played in Port Clarence,” said Pallister, now 57 and at a point in his life when he finds himself reflecting on the highs and lows of his footballing career. “I was driving with some of the other lads to my pick-up point on a Sunday to get ready for the game.

“I got in the car and started getting tingling down my arms that I couldn’t shake off. Then, my vision started to go and my speech also went. I couldn’t form words. I couldn’t get a sentence out – I thought I was having a stroke. I had to get the car to turn round and head home. It was the first time in my life I’d had a migraine, and I’m convinced it was because, that year, I’d started playing two full games in a week.”

Playing two games in a week would become a recurring theme through the rest of Pallister’s career, which took him to the very pinnacle of European and world football with Middlesbrough, Manchester United and England. Sadly, so would the migraines.

Sometimes, they would come and go within the space of a day. Other times, they would leave him exhausted and washed out for the best part of 48 hours, unable to get off the settee, let alone train or play in a competitive fixture. Once, after an especially debilitating episode, he had to ring England manager Terry Venables and tell him he would be unable to link up for training ahead of a midweek international because an ongoing migraine was so severe.

“I’d probably get the really bad migraines three or four times a year,” he said. “The pain would come on, above the eyes, and it was horrific, like someone sticking needles in the back of your eyes. I’d be like that for hours, before I’d eventually start throwing up.

“Once I’d thrown up, it would start to abate. But then the day after that, I’d be completely washed out. It felt as if your head was made of eggshells. In many ways, the aftermath was worse than the actual migraine – it would disable you for two days.”

Pallister would discuss his condition with the medical staff at his clubs, and even had injections in an attempt to bring things under control. It is only now though, with his playing days at an end and the spotlight being shone on the long-term effects of repeatedly heading the ball, that he is properly considering the impact his footballing career had on his health.

For more than two-and-a-half decades, as a physically-imposing centre-half whose stock in trade was outjumping opponents to win headers, Pallister suffered from migraines. As soon as he stopped playing, they came to an end.

“They stopped when I stopped playing football,” he said. “From about six months after I stopped playing, I don’t think I had another migraine for about ten years. Every now and then, I get a bit of a migraine now. But they’re nothing like they used to be – they’re much, much rarer and they’re nowhere near as severe.

“I heard lots of different explanations for them when I was playing – too much cheese, too much chocolate, not enough water – but it was never really properly looked into. Listen, I’m not a daft lad. I’m convinced it was a result of constantly heading the ball.

“The Mitre balls we were playing with in the 1980s were nothing like the old leather balls from the 60s or 70s, but they were still much heavier than the balls they have today. They must have had an effect.”

The extent of that effect is gradually becoming clearer. With a number of high-profile members of England’s 1966 World Cup winning squad developing dementia, a landmark 2019 study conducted by Professor Willie Stewart looked into a possible link between repeated head traumas and a diagnosis of neurodegenerative disease. It found that ex-football players were five times more likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease and had approximately a three-and-a-half times higher death rate due to neurodegenerative disease than the general population.

“Is it a worry? Of course, it is,” said Pallister. “I’ve lost count of the number of people I’ve known in the game who are going through this – Gordon McQueen, who I know very well, Bobby Charlton – and I’ve also had family members suffer from dementia. It’s a really horrible and uncomfortable disease to have to deal with.”

On Sunday, Spennymoor Town will stage the second ‘Head for Change’ game where heading is banned to help raise awareness of the issues surrounding sports-related dementia, with Pallister a strong supporter.

“I’m not sitting here saying I don’t want to see heading in football,” he said. “But I am saying you need to look into things properly and educate the young people that are coming through because the potential is there that it has an adverse effect.

“Have the powers that be swept this under the carpet because it might take them to a place they don’t want to be? To be honest, I think everyone’s probably been guilty of burying their heads in the sand. We were probably guilty as players because we didn’t want to think about the potential damage.

“I’m sure I thought at the time, ‘Yeah, the migraines are probably caused by heading the football’. But was I going to stop playing? No. Did I think there were going to be any long-term consequences? Probably not. But now, you can’t help but wonder.”

* Sunday's charity game at Spennymoor's Brewery Field will raise funds for Head For Change and the Solan Connor Fawcett Cancer Trust, Kick-off is 3pm and tickets are £5 for adults and £2 for Under-18s.