BOTH of Kevin Hetherington’s jobs involve him working with figures but over the last few years he became increasingly aware that something wasn’t quite adding up.
The former Queen of the South and Ayr United defender was starting to forget things. His legs and arms became numb and tingly. His vision wasn’t quite right, his speech jumbled, his memory patchy. A former pub landlord who loved chatting to people, the 58-year-old started to become withdrawn, keen to avoid crowds and unable to cope with any kind of loud noise.
Doctors in his hometown of Dumfries and then in Edinburgh and Glasgow diagnosed it initially as a form of Covid-induced depression and stress. That didn’t ring true for Hetherington. This wasn’t a mental health problem or a case of lockdown blues. Instead it was a gradual but very noticeable change in his basic physical capabilities. A fit and healthy former professional athlete who would regularly walk or cycle the seven miles to his job at a steel stockholders was now struggling to simply move from one room to the next.
Hetherington, however, was persistent. Supported by wife Fiona and other close family members, the part-time football statistician chose not to accept the doctors’ verdict even after initial MRI scans proved inconclusive. That determination to keep probing would eventually pay off. A CT scan in August confirmed what the former Annan Athletic player-manager had feared all along as he was diagnosed with “Alzheimer’s dementia and chronic traumatic encephalopathy due to years of playing football”. It was the one time the former central defender would have loved to have been wrong.
“It was late 2018 or maybe early 2019 when I first felt something wasn’t quite right,” he recalls. “I used to walk or cycle the seven miles to my work every day but I could feel that my right leg wasn’t working porperly. It was like my brain wasn’t connected properly to my foot. It looked like I was drunk half the time. I went for my regular eye test and they didn’t like what they saw and had to refer me to the eye clinic. They could see there was a lot of pressure behind the eyes and that’s what triggered everything.
“I started to notice a difference in myself and Fiona noticed it too. We’ve been together since we were 17 so she was quick to spot a change in my behaviour. We used to be publicans in Dumfries so we were very outgoing and sociable people. But I’m not confident now about going out. I’ve become like a couch potato. I don’t like too much noise or being in a closed environment as I feel a wee bit anxious if I’ve not got an escape route. It’s changed my whole outlook.
“I’d always been really sharp mentally all my days after quitting football. I work with figures in both my jobs and it’s never been a problem. But in the last two years I started making horrific mistakes, getting things the wrong way round and saying things that weren’t quite making sense. Part of my job is being a good communicator but now I can sit and not speak to my colleagues for hours on end. I can stare into space for long periods and don’t engage in conversation.
“And in my Saturday job as a statistician, because there’s so much gambling involved in football now, you have to make sure you make the right calls. I’ve made a couple of mistakes, nothing major but small things, saying the wrong things. So it is gradually affecting me in all aspects of my life.”
Hetherington was 55 when he first started to investigate what was wrong with him but only after three years of perseverance did he finally arrive at the conclusion he had expected all along.
“The doctors kept saying to me I was too young to have Alzheimer’s,” he revealed. “They started off saying it was depression because of Covid but I’ve never been depressed in my life. I’ve always been a very positive person. But it’s all had an effect on me over the past two years; my demeanour, the way that I am all the time, having sore arms and legs, and the glaucoma that has affected my vision and led to them taking away my driver’s licence. And it’s all brain-related.
“So I kept pushing and managed to get more appointments. I had four MRI scans that didn’t really show anything. They ruled out Parkinson’s and a few other things but I knew something wasn’t right between the ears.
“And then they finally sent me last month for a proper CT scan where it goes in-depth and they inject radiation into your arm. The scan comes out in all different colours on the screen. Red and orange were the colours they wanted to see which indicates a warm brain. But the majority of mine came up blue and green. And that basically indicated that my brain was dead at the front. They said I’m like a boxer who’s been battered across the front and sides of the head.”
Research continues into contact sports and their link to neurodegenerative diseases after a 2019 University of Glasgow study revealed that football defenders were more than five times as likely as the average person to develop dementia. Those who played for 15 years or longer, as Hetherington did despite breaking his leg twice, are also more likely to succumb.
“I remember as a youngster heading a ball with my dad down the park, it was just something you always practised,” he added. “I got picked up by Ayr United at 14 and was there until I was 20. I then had two spells with my hometown club Queen of the South where I was club captain and played around 230 first-team games. I also played at Auchinleck and finished up at Annan before I had to give it up as my joints were badly affected by arthritis after two bad leg breaks when I was younger.
“As a player I would put my head where some people wouldn’t put their feet. That was just the way football was played in the ’80s and ’90s. It was full contact. I was quite small for a centre-half, about 5ft10 and a half. So I used to take a lot of knocks from big centre-forwards, with elbows to the head and the rest. So heading has become a major issue for football to deal with. They’ve banned it for kids and they’re talking about doing similar in the adult game. It’s something they should definitely look at.”
Hetherington’s primary motivation about speaking out is not to seek sympathy but to prompt others who may be in a similar position to get themselves checked out.
“I fear that there will be a lot more former pros who maybe have similar symptoms and not think too much about it. I just felt it was important to let people know what I’ve gone through and urge them to go and get checked if they’re experiencing anything similar. If they’re getting headaches, poor vision, mood swings or not getting proper feeling in their feet then they need to go and ask the question.
“Don’t be put off with doctors saying you’re too young and fobbing you off. If you don’t think you’re right, you’ve got to fight it. For guys my age or even younger, they need to start taking this really seriously and properly looking at it.”
Being accurately diagnosed at last won’t lead Hetherington to be cured but has at least allowed doctors to slow the process down. He remains remarkably stoic despite his circumstances and ready to face whatever lies ahead of him.
“What I’ve got is non-curable and I’m going to deteriorate as the years go on,” he admits. “I’ve been on dementia tablets for the last six months as they said at the time it wouldn’t do any harm to take them until we got all the scans done. So that medication is well into my system now which probably helps the situation slightly. Because I’ve come forward so early they can slow the process down. They told me if I’d left it another eight or 10 years then no chance.
“There’s no point worrying about it. It’s just about how strong my heart is as they’ve told me my brain will deteriorate. I’ve got only one real fear and that’s losing my sight. Apart from that I’m not scared of anything. The family were all a wee bit upset when I told them but we’ve dealt with that now and we know what’s in front of us. And we’ll just get on with it the best we can.”
