Dean Windass: ?When I was diagnosed with dementia, they asked how many balls I headed

Former Hull striker on his push to raise awareness, thriving as a pantomime villain and his most famous goal
The framed photograph hangs just inside the front door. It shows Dean Windass, somehow larger than life even with his back turned to the camera, standing with arms aloft on the balcony of Hull city hall and inhaling the adulation of thousands. Two days earlier he had, at the age of 39, scored a winner for the ages at Wembley and sent his boyhood club to the Premier League. He could not have caught the ball any more sweetly after Fraizer Campbell had chipped it across; it was no hardship that, even then, he knew it would follow him for ever.
?It changed my life,? Windass says, sitting in his living room on a quiet May morning. ?I scored 234 goals and everyone only talks about that one.? To this day he swears a scorcher at Wycombe in 1992-93, ?volleyed in with my left foot from 950 million yards?, was superior to his museum piece from 2008. But he is synonymous with the playoffs now; they are his thing, a sporting event he still anticipates like few others, and when we meet he correctly predicts Sheffield United will meet Sunderland in Saturday?s Championship final.
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