'After my diagnosis, they asked me how many balls I headed'

The former Hull striker Dean Windass speaks candidly about living with stage-two dementia, playing a pantomime villain and that goal at Wembley

- Nick Ames

The framed photograph hangs just inside the front door. It shows Dean Windass 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 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 tomorrow's Championship final.

That is the uncomplicated side to Windass, who happily describes himself as "the most boring man you've ever seen in your life" during weeknights watching football, soaps or documentaries. In the public eye he was always a showman: a bustling menace on the pitch and pantomime villain when playing to the gallery of a goading opposition support.

Beneath the bravado there was plenty more swirling away: Windass has been candid about his post-career struggles, which may have been caused by a combination of unresolved childhood issues and the degradation of two decades' day-to-day structure.

He made two suicide attempts and spent 26 days in rehab for alcohol dependency; he was made bankrupt through debts to HM Revenue and Customs incurred via a film investment scheme that stung numerous ex-pros.