Four Premier League-era players and Joe Kinnear’s family part of brain injury legal action | Football

Four players from the Premier League era and the family of Joe Kinnear are part of a legal action against football authorities over game-related brain injuries, which returns to the Crown Court on Wednesday.

They are part of a group of 35 former players who claim the Football Association, the English Football League, the Football Association of Wales and Ifab, football’s governing body, were negligent in failing to take reasonable steps to protect them from permanent injury , caused by repeated brain and subcerebral strokes.

Before the latest hearing, which is a routine case management conference before a potential future trial, the players’ attorneys provided more than 8,000 pages of medical records and documents related to the case.

Six plaintiffs died during the trial, including Kinnear last month. Lawyers for the players say the players are living or have lived with irreversible neurological damage, including early-onset dementia, chronic traumatic encephalopathy, post-concussion syndrome, epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease and motor neurone disease.

Speaking ahead of the hearing, the players’ lawyer Richard Boardman of Rylands Garth accused the game’s authorities of seeking to delay legal proceedings.

“Today’s hearing is the latest milestone in our campaign to seek justice for those who have not been protected by football’s governing bodies from brain injury,” he said. “The sheer scale of the problem is illustrated by the fact that we have submitted more than 8,000 pages of medical records and legal documents for the first 17 football claimants alone. The defendants are making remarkable efforts to delay the proceedings and are already in violation of court protocols for disclosing documents.

An FA spokesman said: “We are unable to comment on ongoing legal proceedings. We continue to play a leading role in reviewing and improving the safety of our game. This includes investing in and supporting multiple projects to achieve a better understanding of the field through objective, robust and in-depth research. We have already taken many proactive steps to review and address potential risk factors that may be associated with football while ongoing research continues in this area, including liaising with international governing bodies.

The EFL, FAW and Ifab have been approached for comment.

The next brain injury hearing will be held on May 20, when rugby union and rugby league cases will be heard together for the first time.