NRL 2022: Parramatta Eels legend Ray Price reveals his heartbreaking battle with dementia

Parramatta legend Ray Price - the club’s last premiership-winning captain - has worringly joined the growing list of NRL champions with dementia. He opens up on the harrowing experience.

He is famously known as Mr Perpetual Motion, but no man was supposed to move like this.

Ray Price stares blankly into the dark of night. It’s around 3am.

Wearing pyjamas, he is walking aimlessly, painfully, disturbingly, along a stretch of road, blood pouring from his bare feet ripped apart by a 10km soul-destroying stroll he cannot remember. Suddenly, the headlights of a passing car jolt Price into reality.

The motorist instantly recognises the rugby league legend in a place he shouldn’t be and pulls over.

“Where am I?” a confused Price asks the stranger, who replies: “I know who you are ... and I’m getting you help”.

It’s the triple-0 phone call that will forever remain a signpost in the life of rugby league’s gutsiest gladiator.

Eels legend Ray Price has opened up on his battle with dementia. Picture: Adam Head

Price — Parramatta’s last premiership-winning captain — has revealed he has been diagnosed with dementia.

Price is the latest rugby league legend to detail his battle with the condition, joining his former Canterbury rival Steve Mortimer and Souths great Mario Fenech, who went public a fortnight ago with his heartbreaking struggle with early onset dementia.

It has been 36 years since Price captained the Eels to premiership glory with a 4-2 defeat of Canterbury in the 1986 grand final. It was his 258th and final game for Parramatta before the retiring warhorse was chaired off into the sunset.

Now, as his beloved Eels look to break the NRL’s longest-standing title drought on Sunday night, Price is waging a crippling battle with an enemy he cannot see ... invading his own mind.

Ray Price holds up the Winfield Cup trophy after his final game in 1986.

“My brain is still there but I have been diagnosed with dementia,” said Price, who turned 69 in March. “I actually have the same neurologist (Rowena Mobbs) that Mario has got. I’ve been seeing her a bit longer than Mario.

“I watched the interview with Mario and it was really hard.

“It was heartbreaking to watch. I felt really bad for Mario and there could be a lot of players from our era who are going to be in the same position.

“’Turvey’ (Mortimer) has the same problems with dementia, too.

“It’s unfair, but that’s the price we paid for that era of football.

“When they first told me (about his diagnosis), I couldn’t believe it. But I refuse to let it get me down. I can be pig-headed, as people know, and I try not to believe a lot of things.

“I’m feeling OK now, but my condition will get worse and I just have to keep fighting.

“I just don’t want to lay down and die. I have 13 grandkids. What’s the point of rolling over and dying?”

Dementia is a general term for loss of memory, language, problem-solving and other thinking abilities that are severe enough to interfere with daily life.

Souths great Mario Fenech is also battling dementia. Picture: 7NEWS Spotlight

Price, Mortimer and Fenech represent a triumvirate of tragic tales that have shone a forensic torch on the effects of concussions in rugby league, and why Australian Rugby League Commission boss Peter V’landys is ruthless in his desire to stamp out head-trauma incidents.

Over the past 18 months, V’landys has spearheaded a move to eliminate high tackles in the NRL in a bid to combat the incidence of concussions, a strategic direction Price himself applauds.

But in relation to Price, the high-shot crackdown is decades too late for the Parramatta warrior, who carved out a fearless reputation, incessantly discarding self-preservation as he led the Eels to four premierships during his golden reign between 1976-86.

It was a time when players routinely got up and soldiered on after being knocked out in games. And there were few who put their body — and mind — on the line like Price.

“There’s no doubt the head knocks I copped during my playing days has caused my brain damage,” said Price from his home at Tweed Heads.

Ray Price, left, was renowned for his toughness and fearless playing style.

“I believe the referees of that era had the weapons to stop these high tackles from occurring and they refused to do it. It’s crap.

“There would be a fair few players from my era who would be battling dementia.

“It will not go away and the game and the referees have to make sure they stop high shots in the game.

“I don’t believe I copped a stack of concussions, but I do remember games where I would cop a knock and be dazed and we just got up and played on.

“That was what we did back then.

“The game looks after players a lot more today than they did when I played and that’s great. I fully support what’s going on in the game today.

“I have appointments every three months with the neurologist. I keep going to the people who are experts in this field.

“At my age it’s only normal to expect some memory loss. I’m no different to many other people at my age, you do forget things.

Ray Price took plenty of hard knocks during his rugby league career.

“I’m not as severe as Mario at this stage. Mario got a few hidings on the field and probably a lot more than I got.

“It’s hard for the doctors to know how bad I will get or how fast I will deteriorate, so we will have to wait and see. I’m not trying to worry about it. I can’t afford to live that way.”

History shows the indefatigable Price is largely impervious to defeat.

He has beaten cancer not once, but twice. When he was first diagnosed with bowel cancer 15 years ago, Price says he was given seven days to live.

“I’m still here,” says Price.

The Eels great and wife Sandy were then both diagnosed with skin cancer three years ago. They had aggressive forms of melanoma; Price reached level three, Sandy level four, the most severe stage and ostensibly terminal.

“Sandy is a fighter like me. We are both in remission,” Price says.

“I’ve had a couple of bouts with cancer, so I won’t let dementia stop me.

Ray Price and his wife Sandy were both diagnosed with skin cancer three years ago. Picture: Adam Head

“My attitude always with these medical issues is if you keep fighting, you will keep surviving.

“With bowel cancer, the doctors said I wouldn’t last more than a week, but I said bullshit and I refused to give up.

“I’m taking medication now (for his dementia) to slow the process of my brain getting worse.

“I don’t know if the drugs are working, but they don’t make me feel any worse.

“If you give in, you are succumbing to something that will kill you and I just don’t want to do that.”

While Price is typically stoic, Sandy, his loving partner of 26 years, does most of the worrying.

The pair celebrated their 20th wedding anniversary on Wednesday, three days after the NRL grand final, and Sandy admits the sight of Fenech’s physical and mental decay was confronting.

While Price’s deterioration has been slower than that of the 60-year-old Fenech, nine years his junior, Sandy carries scars from an incident that led to her husband’s dementia diagnosis.

“Ray went missing in Campbelltown two years ago,” Sandy recalls.

“He went down to Sydney to talk at a rugby union club at Narellan. He was staying with our solicitor and he got up out of bed. He had his summer pyjamas on and he walked out of the hotel and just kept walking for three hours.

“It was 3 o’clock in the morning and a motorist saw Ray walking along the road.

“He had no skin left on his feet. The sores were so bad he couldn’t walk for two or three weeks after that.

“The ambulance took Ray straight to Campbelltown hospital. They did all sorts of tests on him. They thought he had a mild stroke, but when the results came back, there was something just inside his forehead.

“I don’t know the exact medical terms, but the doctors said there is definitely some brain damage from concussions.”

Price has quit his job as a bus driver. He spends most of his days playing golf — he played 27 holes on Wednesday — and never misses a Parramatta game on TV. He remains in touch with legendary Parramatta teammates Peter Sterling, Steve Ella, Brett Kenny, Mick Cronin and Paul Taylor.

Ray Price has quit his job as a bus driver.

Despite his condition, the dual international is still quite sharp, but Sandy accepts the road ahead will be traumatic.

“That incident at Campbelltown scared me,” she says. “Even if he is an hour late now after golf, I start to panic.

“To be honest, I saw this coming a few years ago. There were moments where he was forgetting things and I thought something wasn’t right.

“Six days out of seven, Ray is fine, he remembers more than me some days.

“His deterioration is going to happen, but the longer it takes to happen the better.

“It’s such a horrible thing to go through. I think it’s important to tell our story and make people aware of what this terrible disease is all about.

“We do worry about him naturally and the kids worry about his health, but we are here to support him. We have a little granddaughter, she is two years old and she is the light of Ray’s life, even if she is a Roosters fan.”

Price has been a long-time critic of the Eels, putting him off-side with club officials, but Sandy said his pride at Parramatta’s first grand final since 2009 is palpable.

Ray Price won four premierships with the Eels in the 1980s. Picture: Action Photographics

“This man can’t sleep at night at the moment. He is so excited,” she said.

“Ray really does love the Eels, more than ever.

“We have built a man cave at the back of the house and that’s where he goes to sit and watch his beloved Eels every week.

“As long as he has his golf, his grandkids and his Eels, he is the happiest man in the world.”

There is a serious, overarching narrative to Price’s dementia diagnosis.

Where does the buck stop for the brain disorders afflicting the nation’s ageing sporting legends?

In America, the NFL’s concussion fund has paid out more than $820 million to former gridiron stars who have suffered five types of brain injuries, including early and advanced dementia.

In 2019, Price’s former Canterbury rival Steve Folkes, who died the previous year of a heart attack aged 59, became the first Australian sportsman to be diagnosed with Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE), a term used to describe brain degeneration likely caused by repeated head traumas

There are fears a class action could one day be instigated against the NRL or AFL over head-trauma cases, but Price has no interest in suing the game he loves.

“I have no regrets at all,” he said. “I have no issues with the game. I would play football all over again. I loved it. You have to do some sort of sport to be active, but the people in charge of rugby league have to do the right thing to protect the current players.”

Asked if he will donate his brain to aid CTE research, Price said: “I want to donate my brain but my wife doesn’t want me to because she wants to be buried with me and my brain.

“We will see what happens.”

Prime Minister Bob Hawke with Parramatta greats Michael Cronin and Ray Price after winning the 1986 grand final. Picture: Action Photographics

Price attended Sunday’s grand final with his stepson Jason as the Eels fell short of winning the club’s fifth premiership.

But Parramatta’s toughest general has promised he won’t be abandoning the blue-and-gold army any time soon.

“I would love to see Parra win it and break the drought,” Price says.

“I was the last premiership captain and that’s 36 years ago now.

“I’m 70 in March and my aim is to live till I’m 100. I have a champion wife that takes care of me, I have my beautiful grandkids and I have good doctors who are doing their best for me.

“They will keep me alive and I’m going for the century.

“I reckon I can get there.”

Originally published as NRL 2022: Parramatta Eels legend Ray Price reveals his heartbreaking battle with dementia