Former rugby league player Andrew Hodge has been deserted after serving his country
FORMER rugby league player Andrew Hodge suffered physically and mentally from serving a nation that has now deserted him, writes Paul Kent.
Opinion
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ABOUT a fortnight ago an investigation revealed, to the great shame of the Australian Defence Force and the Department of Veterans’ Affairs (DVA) and yes, our country, that 41 military personnel have committed suicide this year.
The same many soldiers died in the 13 years of the Afghan war.
They are bringing our war home with them.
Grieving families were angry and said they might still be alive if the ADF and DVA had given adequate support.
If there was a chance of saving even one of those men, would they take it?
We have that chance.
Andrew Hodge was a rising NRL player in the 1990s.
He played 10 first grade games with Gold Coast in 1995 and two with Newcastle the season after.
He was light-boned but fit and growing into his NRL body when he suddenly quit.
His father died that season in Newcastle and his mum needed help with their business.
When she was finally sorted and he had finished his university degree, with honours, Hodge looked around for work and joined the Special Forces.
He knew the special contract he was signing up for.
“I put my life on the line for the country and, in return, if something happens to me and I get injured or I die you either look after me or look after my family,” he says.
He thought it was that simple and most of us would agree.
He went to Timor and Afghanistan and trained as a sniper, taking down the enemy before they could get to the soldiers.
“Playing first grade footy didn’t even come close to this,” he says now, “the guys you’re with, the commitment ...”
On patrol in Afghanistan in 2008 he was going down a steep incline on a quad bike when a rock shifted under his front tyre and the bike flipped.
In the washing-machine next, Hodge can remember tremendous pressure to his head: “You know when you’re a kid and someone puts their arms around you and squeezes so you can’t breathe? That’s how my head felt.”
His partner saw the tyre roll over Hodge’s head. He was afraid to walk down the mountainside after the accident.
The one-and-a-half tonne bike tore the nerves from Hodge’s neck and shoulder. It caused many more injuries and sent him to hospital and the surgeon’s knife.
But Hodge, the former footballer, now a soldier, did what such men always do. He thought of the men beside him and duty and during his stint in hospital moved quickly to return.
Just months later he was back patrolling Afghanistan, taking down the enemy.
The injuries, though, got him. There was so much the hospital did not find.
His spine is twisted, floating bones were found in his elbows and hips. He has constant pins and needles in his fingers. Numbness in his face.
Listen, he says from his home near Ballina, putting the phone to his elbow and bending and straightening his arm. It is the sound of a child stepping over gravel.
Both knees, both shoulders, the elbow and hips have all since had operations.
Last week he got up during the night to attend daughter Maggie when suddenly he fell.
He has a femoral impingement, which deadens the nerve in his leg. He thought he stepped forward but the leg didn’t co-operate.
“He has 21 compensatory injuries,” says Frank Benfield.
Benfield is Hodge’s advocate.
He was on the Veteran’s Review Board for 13 years and was a member of the Prime Ministerial Advisory Council doing work so highly thought of he was made an Order of Australia.
On the Council he was part of the review to provide rehabilitation and compensation. He knows intimately the three legislative changes to help our vets. He is confused about what is happening to Hodge who, he says, more than qualifies.
“He is seriously disabled, both physically and mentally,” Benfield says.
“He has traumatic brain injury, a cognitive deficit, which means his responses are like someone who has had a stroke.
“That lack of brain capacity is compounded by his traumatic stress disorder and his depression.
“His capacity to deal with stress and strains of normal life, his capacity to deal with that is quite restricted. He gets confused and frustrated and angry and disoriented.”
Some of the damage to Hodge’s brain affected his pituitary gland and testosterone levels.
Wanting a family, he was assisted with testosterone injections. Penny was born in 2011, Maggie last year.
Much of life remained a fog, Monica holding the family together. She was helping him, saving him.
“She’s a bloody saint,” says Benfield. “She does everything around the house because he can’t.”
They were making do, however they could.
When the DVA assessed him on the impairment scale, Hodge scored 87. It maxes at 100, which is death.
“It tells you he is severely disabled by his service,” Benfield says.
Then, earlier this month, the DVA reassessed his status.
“I note that both children were born after your accepted injury, therefore, you and Mrs Hodge would have been aware of your limitations and parental responsibilities with regards to the care children require,” states the letter to Hodge.
“Although child care assistance has been previously approved this does not fit with the MRCA policy and guidelines nor community standards in regards to caring for children when both parents are not working/studying.”
What a disgraceful department it must be. What community standards do they speak of?
The DVA cut Monica’s attendant care allowance and their child care allowance.
It was not their only knock-back. Just the latest.
Benfield is frustrated.
“In the last two years particularly, every time we’ve wanted something we have had to fight for it,” he says.
Hodge is no longer equipped to deal with what they do to him.
“I’ve sort of reached the point where I’ve had a gutful,” he says.
JUST ANSWER THE QUESTION
LARRY WRITER, Author of one of Australian sport’s great books
You’ve just reissued what I call a classic book, “Never Before, Never Again”. Why the reissue?
It’s the 50th anniversary of St George’s 1966 premiership (the last of their 11 straight, the book’s subject). For the past 18 years you could only buy it for $150 on rare book sites.
And how you updated this edition?
I’ve interviewed Mark Gasnier, who is obviously the nephew of Reg, and also Craig Young, who had a strong connection with Harry Bath. The epilogue is Eddie Lumsden and Johnny King, the two wingers who had a strong connection and it starts with them at the funeral of Reg Gasnier.
What did they say?
They’re mourning the loss of old mates. Since the book was written some have passed away, some have become ill or infirm with advancing years. Johnny said he doesn’t need a funeral to be reminded of the brotherhood they had.
How much have they changed since you wrote the book?
Like any group of people there are those who are successful in life and some others who weren’t. It’s hard to replicate the success they had as young men. I don’t know, but I suspect for some of them the rest of their life has been an anticlimax.
After 50 years, will it ever happen again, 11 straight premierships?
I don’t think so with the salary cap. They had internationals in reserve grade because they couldn’t make first grade.
CHILL PILLS
NOBODY had heard of Curtis Luck before this week. Few have now. Luck won the US Amateur title this week. Get ready for him to turn pro, we will hear a whole lot more of him from then on.
ANGRY PILLS
IT was a bit rich hearing Jarryd Hayne’s whinges about the media, from high up on his soapbox, this week. Nobody has milked their career commercially more than Hayne in recent years.
A GOOD WEEK FOR
IT is sad for the rest of us, but Jamie Lyon leaves the game essentially in the manner he preferred to play in. Quietly, without much fuss. Lyon announced his retirement midweek and won’t even have a farewell game for the Brookvale faithful to bid him a fond farewell. Lyon hit the NRL in 2000, when most of us were much younger. He never much cared for the spotlight, still called the game “footy”, and suffered the fate of many retiring legends, unable to finish the season with a hamstring injury.
A ROUGH WEEK FOR
THE insurance company’s refusal to pay out Anthony Watmough’s contract highlights the hairs on the NRL’s injury retirement clause. It means the Eels must pay Watmough, not insurance. Given Parra did not give Watmough a medical until after he signed and that Manly would not sign him beyond two seasons because the club believed his body would not last beyond that, but signed him anyway, what has the game created for itself? It now means rich clubs can sign ageing players to long contracts and then retire them prematurely, on full pay, with no damage to the salary cap.
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