Former Adelaide and Collingwood gun Paul Seedsman opens up on daily concussion-related ‘agony’

Four years after the concussion that ended his career, former Crow and Magpie Paul Seedsman is symptomatic every day – and sometimes bedridden for weeks. He opens up on the battle.

Former Adelaide and Collingwood winger Paul Seedsman says he is still dealing with daily concussion-related symptoms, which are sometimes so severe he is bedridden for weeks or feels like he is having a stroke, nearly four years after suffering it.

Seedsman retired in 2023 after an independent medical concussion panel recommended he no longer play sport.

That came after he suffered a concussion in a training incident in 2021, the pre-season after he had a career-best season in which he played 22 games, was named in the 40-man All-Australian squad and finished third in the Crows’ club champion award.

Nearly four years on from the head knock, Seedsman said he was symptomatic every day, it just depended on “the severity and longevity” of them.

Paul Seedsman after officially retiring last year. Picture: Sarah Reed/AFL Photos

“I get headaches, nausea, dizziness. Some mornings I wake up and I can’t get out of bed and I’m sort of gone for the whole day,” he said on Grandstand SA.

“Other days it gradually just increases throughout the day.”

When it gets really bad for the 132-gamer, he says it feels like he is having a stroke.

“Anything that I do during the day, the best way someone described it was like a battery life,” he said.

“Like a phone battery, everything takes away from it. So when I hit the yellow areas then the symptoms and that start to go up and if I hit the red areas those are the days when I can’t get out of bed.

“If the phone goes flat... in December when I was bedridden for two to three weeks and that was from doing a couple of things in the morning one morning.

“I’ve never had a stroke but it sort feels like a stroke, I can’t lift my arms and legs off the bed, I can’t talk and that so I have to lay down for a while and eventually drinking fluid and eating stuff and settling down I can get that back in terms of movement and talking.

“But I can’t do anything, I am in agony.”

Seedsman had to wear glasses while outside running in 2022. Picture: Emma Brasier

The 33-year-old is now an assistant coach at Walkerville Football Club in Adelaide. Picture: Walkerville FC

That isn’t the only issue for the 33-year-old, who has also been diagnosed with chronic sleep disorder and is also on antidepressants.

“I haven’t slept without assistance for three years now,” he said.

“So that is always hard, for the six months I wasn’t sleeping and if you don’t get that reset overnight it is pretty tough.

“It is always there and I have to be really careful about how much I do, I haven’t found that line yet because it is different every day.”

Seedsman in action for the Magpies. Picture: George Salpigtidis

Yet the former Crow and Pie has stayed remarkably positive during the ordeal, which he said was down to some work around mindset he had done before the concussion as well as being married to wife Alice and being a father to daughter Cami.

“I was probably quite fortunate that I did a course around mindset because I always thought I was quite positive but in 2020 I got very negative,” he said.

“I got dropped multiple times by Adelaide, we were the worst team in the competition.

“Nicksy (Matthew Nicks) and I were on completely different pages so I went on a course to work on myself and it has been a blessing in disguise for what I deal with now.

“Because things like a gratitude journal, doing that every day and this course talks about the laws of polarity, there’s a good and bad in every situation.

“But I also have a beautiful wife and daughter which gives me a lot of purpose as well, I try to look for the good in what I’ve got.”

Originally published as Former Adelaide and Collingwood gun Paul Seedsman opens up on daily concussion-related ‘agony’