{"id":161914,"date":"2025-06-06T03:33:13","date_gmt":"2025-06-06T03:33:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/161914\/"},"modified":"2025-06-06T03:33:13","modified_gmt":"2025-06-06T03:33:13","slug":"footy-legend-graham-eadie-opens-up-for-the-first-time-about-the-unwinnable-health-battle-thats-left-him-unable-to-turn-on-a-tv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/161914\/","title":{"rendered":"Footy legend Graham Eadie opens up for the first time about the unwinnable health battle that’s left him unable to turn on a TV"},"content":{"rendered":"

Australian rugby league great Graham Eadie has broken his silence about the horror brain condition that’s reduced him to using a walker to get around and left him unable to turn on a television.<\/p>\n

The former champion fullback, who played 20 Tests for the Kangaroos<\/a>, was recently diagnosed with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), decades after playing in arguably the game’s roughest era.<\/p>\n

Eadie was a mainstay at the Manly Sea Eagles in the 1970s and early 1980s and was man of the match in the 1976 and 1978 grand final wins.<\/p>\n

The man affectionately known as ‘Wombat’ gave his first interview about his condition to Daily Mail Australia from his home on the Gold Coast<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He said his rugby league career played a major role in his recent health decline.<\/p>\n

‘I think it did quite a bit. I can be good then I just forget where I am and a few of the blokes that I played with have that problem too, or had that problem before they passed away,’ Eadie said.<\/p>\n

\"Graham <\/p>\n

Graham Eadie is pictured in his prime as he played a starring role in driving Manly to four grand final wins<\/p>\n

\"A <\/p>\n

A recent photo of Eadie dramatically demonstrates the toll his battle with the deadly brain condition CTE has taken on him<\/p>\n

‘It’s hard. It’s a thing that I’ve got to react to. You can have these problems when you play a game like that.<\/p>\n

‘It’s difficult to comprehend what happens to you in your later life after getting knocked around. Graeme Langlands was one bloke that had a problem and I know Wally (Lewis) has a bit of a problem.’<\/p>\n

It was Immortal Wally Lewis who encouraged Eadie and his wife of 23 years Leah to visit Dr Rowena Mobbs, a neurologist and the founder and director of the Australian CTE Biobank.<\/p>\n

‘Wally rang Graham and told him he had to go see Rowena,’ Leah said.<\/p>\n

‘She saw him and looked at me and said ‘Leah, without a doubt he’s in full CTE, he’s in a bad stage of it too’.’<\/p>\n

CTE is a progressive, degenerative brain disease linked to repeated head trauma, often seen in athletes who play contact sports.<\/p>\n

It is characterised by the build-up of a specific protein called tau, which damages brain cells over time.<\/p>\n

‘Graham’s score on cognitive testing was 43\/100 – in the severe range for cognitive impairment and reflective of a dementia picture,’ Dr Mobbs told Daily Mail Australia.<\/p>\n

\"The <\/p>\n

The star, known to his fans as ‘Wombat’ for his powerful and rugged style of play, is pictured with his granddaughter Millie<\/p>\n

\"Eadie <\/p>\n

Eadie (pictured playing for Australia) was once carried off the field after being concussed and ‘didn’t come to until the next day’<\/p>\n

\"The <\/p>\n

The former fullback has gone from being rated one of the best footy players Australia has ever produced to suffering from seizures and delirium<\/p>\n

‘We can diagnose dementia with virtual certainty. The only uncertainty is to the type of dementia, be it Alzheimer’s disease, frontotemporal dementia or CTE.<\/p>\n

‘Players with a long history of repeated brain injury, and dementia under the age of 60, in my opinion, have a substantive likelihood of CTE. We perform thorough testing and monitoring over time to improve the accuracy of diagnosis.<\/p>\n

‘A diagnosis of CTE allows best care for the patient and their family, rather than floundering without support.’<\/p>\n

In recent years, Australian sport has been rocked by the deaths of former footballers like Paul Green<\/a>, Danny Frawley and Shane Tuck.<\/p>\n

They all took their lives before their autopsy’s revealed they suffered from CTE.<\/p>\n

Even soccer isn’t immune to the threat of sub-concussions.<\/p>\n

A 2023 study at Columbia University Irving Medical Center linked heading the ball to a decline in brain structure and function over a two-year period.<\/p>\n

The 71-year-old Eadie played 237 matches for Manly from 1971 to 1983 and had a stint in England where he won a Challenge Cup for Halifax.<\/p>\n

\"The <\/p>\n

The 71-year-old is pictured chairing fellow Aussie legend Chris Anderson off the ground after winning England’s Challenge Cup final with Halifax<\/p>\n

He was judged as one of the 100 greatest Australian rugby league players of all time in 2008.<\/p>\n

He also won World Cups with Australia and the prestigious Rothmans Medal and Lance Todd Trophy.<\/p>\n

‘It was a rough time (to be playing),’ he said.<\/p>\n

‘I was playing at North Sydney Oval when I got carried off (concussed) and I was taken to hospital and I didn’t come to until the next day.’<\/p>\n

Eadie thought at the time that incidents like that ‘were all part and parcel of the game’.<\/p>\n

‘You had to get up and keep playing (if you were concussed). There were games that I didn’t remember much of,’ he said.<\/p>\n

‘I was getting breaks in the forehead and I just thought that was part of the game.’<\/p>\n

Despite needing a fulltime carer and not being able to drive, turn on a television or work a microwave, Eadie said he wasn’t angry with rugby league.<\/p>\n

‘I have no regrets about playing. I was playing with Manly and having a great time with guys like Terry Randall and Bob Fulton,’ he said.<\/p>\n

‘I’m not dirty on the sport at all, but I’d like to see it better off for the players coming through and the kids.<\/p>\n

‘I applaud them (NRL) for doing more to look after players.’<\/p>\n

Leah started to worry about her husband in 2021 after he suffered a seizure.<\/p>\n

‘Now he’s at the stage where he’s got a walker and he’s hunched over,’ she said.<\/p>\n

‘Last year he started going into deliriums. He’d be sitting on the couch and he just wouldn’t know where he was or what was happening. The CTE caused it.<\/p>\n

‘There’s nothing he can do without help and he gets a lot of mood swings and he’s on anti-psychotics for that.’<\/p>\n

Leah called on the NRL to help out former players struggling with probable CTE because the vast majority of them were battling the disease in silence and without help.<\/p>\n

She said those ex-players ‘need to be acknowledged a bit’.<\/p>\n

‘Not everyone wants compensation, they just want to be noted and their health looked after a little bit better,’ she said.<\/p>\n

‘We don’t want (the game’s authorities) to try and flog Rowena off but actually help her. There’s a lot of players who are going to get this a lot younger than Graham.’<\/p>\n

Eadie said he still watched the rugby league every week and always tuned in to see Manly play.<\/p>\n

\"Despite <\/p>\n

Despite the horrible effects the game has had on him, Eadie (right) says he has no regrets about his playing career – but wants the NRL to do a better job of caring for current stars<\/p>\n

‘Manly are going all right at the moment but then they can have times where they have a few little problems,’ he said.<\/p>\n

‘I’d just like to keep watching the game and if I can I’d like to go and see the game but it’s going to be difficult to get to them without my walker.’<\/p>\n

Eadie is part of a group called ‘Former International Greats’, run by ex-Balmain player Larry Corowa, and they’ve formed a support network for each other to help battle health problems.<\/p>\n

Just last week Paul ‘Fatty’ Vautin and Allan Langer helped raise money for ConneCTErs at a pre State Of Origin lunch.<\/p>\n

ConneCTErs Australia is trying to build awareness and understanding of CTE, while supporting people living with and caring for someone with CTE.<\/p>\n

Donations to the not-for-profit cause can be made here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australian rugby league great Graham Eadie has broken his silence about the horror brain condition that’s reduced him…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":161915,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4102],"tags":[92,30118,4151,93,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-161914","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-dailymail","9":"tag-nrl","10":"tag-rugby","11":"tag-sport","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114634319979794366","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=161914"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161914\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/161915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=161914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=161914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}