HE was a legend of Celtic who never had as many caps for Scotland as he deserved, but who will never be forgotten at Parkhead for his role in the side as they cantered to one of their greatest triumphs.

A regular header of the ball in the days when it could get sodden and resemble a concrete block, he went on to develop Alzheimer’s and be cared for by his devoted wife.

No, not Billy McNeill, whose tragic affliction with dementia was revealed at the weekend, but one of his former colleagues at Celtic, the great Willie Fernie, who died in 2011 after a decade of suffering from Alzheimer’s during which he was cared for by his wife Audrey who sadly died shortly before he did.

It seems almost incredible, but McNeill knew and hugely respected Fernie, playing very briefly alongside him and then being captain of the immortal 1967 team when Fernie was at Parkhead as reserve and youth coach, bringing on the likes of Kenny Dalglish, David Hay and Lou Macari.

It is an awful coincidence, but, as I will show, an understandable one that both Fernie and McNeill should have been afflicted with brain disease. Fernie famously inspired the Hoops to their astonishing 7-1 triumph over Rangers in the Scottish League Cup final of 1957. A bundle of energy who could run all day, Fernie tortured the opposition from the right-half position and scored the closing penalty.

Also in the Celtic XI that day was Billy McPhail, the striker who, it was said, could head the ball harder than some players could hit it with their feet. Indeed, the first of his hat-trick in that final came from his head.

McPhail, too, developed Alzheimer’s and died of it in 2003 at the age of 75, five years after he tried and failed to win compensation for industrial injuries as a result of heading heavy leather balls – the tribunal basically said sorry, Billy, but it was part of your job to have your brain scrambled by those old balls.

A third player from that Celtic team, and some would say the best of them all, was Bobby Collins. He, too, died from Alzheimer’s disease in 2014, 12 gruelling years after he was diagnosed at the age of 70.

Bobby Evans played for Celtic that day. He died in 2001, after years of suffering from Parkinson’s, which is also an incurable disease that starts with degeneration of part of the brain.

We know that the prevalence of Alzheimer’s and other forms of brain disease is growing as fewer of us succumb to heart attacks, stroke and cancer at an earlier age, yet I simply refuse to believe that for four men out of 11 in that 1957 team to die of brain-related diseases is a coincidence.

It’s proof, I think, that footballers from the 1950s onwards, but especially the 60s and 70s, are going to succumb to Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s and various forms of dementia at a much greater rate than the rest of us.

In writing that, I have just realised that I grew up in the 60s and 70s and was lucky enough to attend schools where we played football on grass pitches with real leather balls two or three times a week.

As an old-fashioned poacher who later became a barely adequate centre-back, I did more than my fair share of heading the ball.

I’ve told the story before of mistiming a jump and getting hit on the top of the head by a rain-soaked leather brick. I saw constellations of stars for minutes afterwards and these days I would have been off the pitch for assessment for concussion – but that rule only came in last year.

It seems football just doesn’t want to know about head injury problems. It’s the great dark secret of the game, except that thanks to the courage of men like Billy McPhail, Frank Kopel, Jeff Astle – the England striker died at just 59 of a degenerative brain disease linked to heading the ball – and now Billy McNeill and their families, we are hearing and seeing more and more people speaking out to challenge football’s obnoxious silence on this matter.

I rarely advocate political interference in sport, but unless the Scottish Football Association does something right now about getting hugely more research done into the links between football and brain disease, and about getting compensation for affected players and ex-players, the Scottish Government should step in and force the SFA to do so.

We owe it to McNeill to get something done. Big Billy’s nickname as a player was Cesar, after Cesar Romero the actor, but to his legions of fans he was Caesar, the leader of the Lions, framed in one picture as an imperious god lifting that huge silver trophy into the Lisbon sky.

Having seen him many times in the flesh, I can say he was a prodigious header of the ball, a Caesar who dominated his defence and could clear any trouble with one leap and a nod of his head to send the ball soaring upfield.

He won nine league medals, seven Scottish Cups and six League Cups as a player with Celtic and scored 37 goals, many with his head. My own favourite was at my first Scottish Cup final in 1969 when he headed brilliantly past Norrie Martin in the Rangers goal after just two minutes and 20 seconds.

My memories of him will live as long as my memory does.

To see him brought so low by a disease which I have no doubt has either been caused or exacerbated by his heading of a football is a grievously painful thing.

Football must now react to what has happened to Billy McNeill and all the game’s victims of dementia.