My husband was thirteenth of thirteen children. He was born from a Dublin family in England, so he classed himself as English.

He loved football. It wasn’t like it is now. He was determined to make himself a footballer. He didn’t attend school, only PE lessons and all the teachers said you’re barmy. His careers teacher said “I’ll eat my hat if you ever make it as a footballer” and of course he did.

He was picked up and signed for Aston Villa because we lived in Birmingham then. He made his debut at 17 and was part of Aston Villa winning the European Cup in 1982 which hasn’t been followed up by Aston Villa since. From there he was brought up to Leeds by Billy Bremner and Captained Leeds United for two years until he got injured - he had a big injury and then played for Scarborough, Wigan, Shrewsbury, Doncaster until he gave up when he was 34 and retired.

After that he worked for Leeds ex-players and worked for charity and put on football matches with ex-players to raise money for whatever the charity was on the day. He did that for about 10 years. He was still playing alongside that with non league sides because he couldn’t stop playing, he loved football, just to keep his hat in.

Unfortunately we believe heading the ball, which he did, continuously, hundreds of times a day, because he practiced his heading because that was his ability and now we believe his dementia is linked to CTE (chronic trauma encephalopathy). So what made his life has took part of it away.