VIDEO: Look Dad, we've done it at last - Astle family speak of pain and breakthrough

But one distressing day stands out more than most.

It was the occasion when Jeff Astle, hero of the Baggies' 1968 FA Cup triumph, forgot his finest hour.

"We had a huge photograph of the winning goal in the FA Cup final," recalls Laraine, who was at Wembley on that historic day to see her husband's left-footed rocket see off favourites Everton to send the Cup back to the Midlands.

"I would point to it and one day, about nine months before he died, I said 'do you remember this, Jeff?' He said 'no'.

"I said 'don't you know where that is?' He said 'no'.

"I said 'that's you there, and that's Wembley'. He said 'is it?'

"I said 'you scored the winning goal in the Cup final'. He said 'did I?'

"I said 'yes, do you remember who you played for?' He said 'was it Fulham?'

"He'd won all these medals, won his England caps and got all these records.

"Football had given him all these medals and in the end it took everything away from him because of the illness."

For Laraine and her three daughters, the rapid deterioration of Jeff's condition was distressing in the extreme, given their vivid memories of the Hawthorns icon in his prime.

On the field, Astle was a force of nature – fearless, powerful, dominant in the air and brilliant in front of goal.

And off it, either with supporters or at home with his family, the former striker was no different.

"He was always singing," recalls Dawn, one of Astle's three daughters.

"I remember I had just started secondary school and we would walk into the cul-de-sac where where we lived, and I would say to my friends 'if you can hear anybody singing, it will be my dad'.

"The bathroom was on the front, and you could bet your life as soon as you turned around the corner you would hear him singing.

"Sometimes it was songs about himself, sometimes it was Rhinestone Cowboy and there was some Lionel Richie.

"And then we would come in and I had to tell my friends 'don't mind my dad, he will probably be sitting in his chair with his feet up in his vest and pants!'

"He would just say 'you alright' and I would scuttle off upstairs.

"Some people are larger than life. He was larger than larger than life.

"He was the biggest mickey-taker on this planet, but not in a nasty way.

"He would sing a song, and if he didn't know the words he would just make them up.

"He would sing 'Hello, is it me you're looking for?'

"Then if he couldn't remember the next line he would sing 'And Jeff Astle scored the goal that won the Cup for West Brom'.

"We would say 'can you stop singing about yourself?' And he would just burst out laughing.

"If I had a pound for all the jokes I heard a hundred times we wouldn't need a foundation!

"When he died a part of us died with him.

"We were absolutely devastated, and to see him die the way he died still haunts us."

The day Jeff died, January 19, 2002, is etched in the memory of his family and especially Dawn, whose home he was at when he collapsed and choked to death in front of helpless relatives, the victim of a chronic brain condition caused by the heading of footballs.

Laraine had buried her mother just two days earlier and, while she knew her husband was deteriorating fast, his death and the manner of it still came as a shock as the damage to his brain left him unable to react to choking on food.

"All of us were standing around and he kept swallowing it and he choked, and I've never felt so helpless in my life," says Laraine. "How do you get someone who doesn't understand to spit it out, not to swallow.

"We were shouting at him to spit it out. We've never felt so inadequate because we didn't know what to do.

"We couldn't do anything about it. It was dreadful."

Jeff's death plunged the Albion fanbase into mourning, such was his place in the pantheon of Hawthorns heroes and the genuine shock at losing him at the age of just 59.

For Laraine and her daughters, however, the heartbreak had begun four years earlier when he was diagnosed – wrongly, it would later transpire – with early onset dementia.

His devoted wife protected her husband by keeping his illness from all but their close friends.

But privately, they went through the mill.

"He was very outgoing and that's why we could spot it, because it changed him," says Laraine. "It was very rapid and very aggressive.

"Everything he had been in life, this made him exactly the opposite.

"He never wanted to go out and I couldn't have a window open in the house.

"It could be 90 degrees, but he was terrified of going out.

"He would go into a drawer and wouldn't know knives had a sharp edge.

"I couldn't defrost anything because he didn't know the difference between frozen and not frozen and he would try to eat it.

"He forgot everything that he knew. He would just look at me like I was talking a foreign language.

"He had beautiful, blue, sparkly eyes and they just went dull, although he never lost his smile.

"Even when the girls came to see him, he couldn't remember their names but he knew he loved them.

"It was dreadful to watch him. I would sit with a scrapbook and say 'do you remember that, Jeff?'

"Sometimes he did and sometimes he didn't and that was the way I could gauge how he was." Jeff's death marked the end of one sad chapter for his family, but soon came another.

The coroner at his inquest ruled he had died from 'industrial disease', after which the FA promised a study into the effects of heading balls on players.

Yet 10 years on, a frustrated Laraine and her increasingly angry daughters were left waiting.

The players union, the PFA, appeared to delay involvement and relations with Albion reached such a low that Jeff's daughter Claire was escorted off the Hawthorns' main car park while handing out flyers aimed at raising awareness for their cause.

In the last two years, though, that has all changed. The family refused to be silenced and, when new research found Jeff had died from CTE – otherwise known as 'boxer's brain' – they redoubled their efforts to bring about research into the condition and help for other sufferers.

Eventually, new FA chairman Greg Dyke listened to their pleas and the governing body offered its support. The PFA got on board, too, and finally Baggies chairman Jeremy Peace offered to meet the family.

From that moment, the club lent its wholehearted support and Peace and his fellow directors have driven plans for Jeff Astle Day, which will takes place today as Laraine and her daughters launch the Jeff Astle Foundation.

"A few days after the end of last season we got a call saying 'the chairman would like to meet you and clear the air'," says Laraine.

"It was a get-together at the training ground.

"He just said 'right, tell me everything that's happened'.

"He said he had no idea and he apologised to Claire, because she was escorted off through her dad's gates, which was deeply upsetting.

The club's efforts to build bridges were culminating this afternoon with the current team wearing a replica kit from that 1968 final. It was an idea that reduced Laraine to tears of joy when it was first discussed, but one that will lead to an afternoon of high emotion. "I'm sure going home in the car we will be swimming in tears," says Laraine.

"I'm acutely aware that there will be an awful lot of fans there who went to Wembley with loved-ones or sat around with neighbours and when they see the players in that white kit they won't be at The Hawthorns, they will be back at Wembley with their loved one, some of whom won't be with them anymore and I'm sure it will be very moving.

"There will be tears but what I want there to be is lots of smiles.

"I want us to come away, with the greatest respect to Leicester, with three points and I want lots of celebrations in that dressing room like there was at Wembley.

"I want the spirit of 1968 to spread right through that team."

The launch of the foundation marks the end of the 'Justice for Jeff' campaign, which Baggies fans have backed wholeheartedly to keep the family's pleas in the public eye.

But, they are keen to stress, it is just the start of their efforts to help others going through the dark days that left Dawn suffering serious bouts of depression.

"We knew even before the inquest what had killed him," says Laraine.

"It made Dawn very ill and she's still seeking help for it, but I'm hoping after Saturday that she can throw all her tablets away, look up to the brightest star in the sky and say 'I know it's taken a long while Dad, but we've done it'.

"We started a new chapter now.

"The Justice for Jeff banner has gone into temporary retirement but if anybody fails to keep their promise it will be back.

"He wasn't the first to suffer this and he won't be the last and we want to make sure that no-one else has to sell what their loved-ones have won to pay for their care.

"Nobody, us included, ever thought this would happen to Dad and nobody ever thought our national sport could be a killer, but it can. For us to sit back and do nothing would be wrong and I wouldn't be able to live with myself."