When your life has been football — playing for 20 years, then coaching and managing for 20 years — you grow accustomed to not displaying much emotion. Even though that life has brought me into contact with many people whose personal challenges are heartbreaking.
But I have to confess that it's not easy to put the emotion aside when I'm in the company of the young woman I appeared with in a TV studio this week.
I've known Isla Grist for five years now and come to learn a lot about the dreadful condition she is living with.