Keith Pontin was born in the same year as me (1956) and so he would have experienced those awful really heavy leather balls which would leave a Frankenstein type scar on your forehead if you headed it on the laces. More serious though were the times on wet days when the ball got really heavy when you’d head it and suffer the after effects for minutes afterwards if you didn’t get your contact with the ball exactly right.

If I remember Keith Pontin the player now, virtually all of my memories I have of him are connected with him heading the ball. It was what his game was all about - he’d go for the first challenge and someone like Albert Larmour or Dave Roberts would be “sweeping” behind him dealing with what are now called second balls. One of City’s centre halves while Pontin was there, Paul Went spent most of one season playing up front and revealed that he had an all round game which saw the ball played into his feet at times. Keith Pontin wasn’t clueless when the ball was on the ground, but I don’t think he could have done what Went did - he was a specialist centre half and my guess is that he played in that position all of his life, hence he probably was regularly heading that awful heavy leather ball as a kid.

The repetition of heading balls on a regular basis for thirty years or more must have an impact, especially in the professional game where defenders are encouraged to “attack” the ball and get distance on their headers - it’s a shock that there aren’t many more like Keith Pontin or maybe it’s more accurate to say that there are, but something else claims them before the damage done to them while they were a young man becomes clear.

I daresay it’s true at many clubs these days, but there’s probably only one member of the current City Board who knew of the existence of Keith Pontin before his diagnosis.