NRL news 2023: Phil Gould’s outrageous concussion comments slammed by former player’s wife
Phil Gould’s outrageous comments on the concussion crisis engulfing the NRL shocked many - and hit a nerve with the family of a former premiership-winner, who shared his heartbreaking story.
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The wife of a former St George premiership-winning player now suffering dementia has challenged Bulldogs boss Phil Gould to “come and spend a day with my husband” after he dismissed the concussion crisis engulfing rugby league.
“My daughter is 40 and she says to me, ‘I just want my dad back’,” Lynn McGregor said of her husband Rod.
Rod was a member of the Dragons’ 1977 grand final team famously known as ‘Bath’s Babes’,
but is now a 66-year-old who Lynn says is like “living with a five-year-old”.
“I didn’t contact you to get sympathy,” Lynn said.
“It was just to say people like Phil Gould need to get their facts straight and they need to speak to people who are living the consequences.”
Lynn and her family have been doing just that for more than a decade.
McGregor said she had no intention of taking legal action against the game, and she praises the NRL for the work now being done to try and limit concussion injuries.
But she said when her and her husband were at home on Tuesday night watching NRL 360 Gould’s comments hit a raw nerve.
Among Gould’s outrageous claims were that the NRL’s use of the independent doctor was “the greatest abomination perpetrated on our game in history”.
Lynn started choking up with tears as she spoke about her husband’s predicament: “Phil Gould just got me.
“How can you dismiss this? I just want someone to know it does matter.
“I say to him come and spend a day with my husband.
“Sorry, I get very emotional about this because this is a man who could do anything.
“We have been together for 50 years. So I have seen this all.
“I have seen this man puncture his lung on the football field and not want to come off. He was not able to breathe. And I put him in the car and said, ‘Shut up, I’m taking you to hospital’.
“And I was just so angry.
“When I listen to Phil Gould I think, ‘Do you not know all these people who are out there (former footballers suffering dementia).
“You guys (on NRL 360) said about Steve Mortimer (who also has dementia).
“Does (Gould) not realise that what has happened to Steve is probably somewhere along the lines related to football?”
Lynn explained how Rod’s latest PET scan confirmed the damage to his brain was “global”, meaning every part of the brain is damaged. She said the first signs emerged when he had a nervous breakdown about 12 years ago.
“And our GP gave me a pamphlet on CTE and said read this,” she recalled.
“When you look back in hindsight that was the beginning of things going pear-shaped.
“Rod could have got dementia regardless, but I doubt it.
“And his specialists say we can’t prove CTE, but they are all saying (they believe it was caused by head knocks playing rugby league).
“We have donated Rod’s brain to the Australian Sports Brain Bank, and then we will know.
“But I was just angry that he (Gould) could laugh about it when we are living it.
“And that is what it is. We are living the results of probably what happened to him (playing rugby league). And if you can stop one family going through this.
“My daughter is 40 and she says to me, ‘I just want my dad back’. My son says the same thing.”
Lynn spoke about what there day to day life was now like:
“He gets up, he makes me a cup of tea. Sometimes I get 10 cups of tea in five minutes, but that’s ok.
“He goes off in to have a shower and doesn’t have a shower because he forgets why he is in there. He just changes his clothes.
“Every part of his day has to be supervised. I say, ‘Did you clean your teeth’ … it is like living with a five year old.”
Lynn remembers when Rod signed his first contract with St George it was for the grand sum of $4000 plus match payments.
He played two seasons at the Dragons where he suffered a detached retina, while he had another season at Souths under Jack Gibson before returning to the bush to captain coach Yass and later play for Belconnen United.
Lynn said she once asked her husband before the effects of dementia where as serious as they are now if he had his time over would he have still played rugby league.
His answer was “yes”.
But that doesn’t mean life now is not tough.
While she remains working, Rod goes to “daycare” after giving up his job as a janitor at the Australian Institute of Sport because he used to get lost while at work.
“His boss would actually ring me and say I can’t find him,” Lynn continued.
“My daughter says to me, ‘Don’t say daycare, Mum, that’s awful’.
“And I say, ‘Well, that’s what it is. It’s dementia daycare.
“I watched the interview with Mario Fenech. That is my husband ‘to a t’, except Rod is probably worse now.
“It is like he is not my husband anymore.
“I mean, I love him to death. I love him dearly.
“But our whole relationship is I am his carer. And I would not wish this on any partner or any mother or any father or sister, brother that has to end up being the carer. It is just not fair.
“I just want people to listen and I want them to know the consequences.
“It might not happen to everyone. All these guys who bash their heads on the ground, it will probably only happen to one in 20.
“But if you can stop that one in 20 from going through what we are (it would be worth it).”
NRL, GOULD’S ABOMINABLE APPROACH TO CONCUSSION
By Paul Kent
Eyewitness reports from the casual NRL fan suggest there was not a lot of difference between the hit that on Tuesday night cost Wade Graham several weeks of his playing career to that Felise Kaufusi inflicted on Brandon Smith over the same weekend.
Both rang a few bells. Both got replayed endlessly. Both brought a tear to the eye of old-timers brought up in a time when men were men, and grunted a lot.
Now, though, we have the “the greatest abomination perpetrated on our game in history”, according to Phil Gould, which is his description of the influence of doctors and lawyers on rugby league and their attempts to save people from brain damage.
Gould did not miss Monday night on what he thought of the NRL’s concussion protocols, and the value of the independent doctor, even though he failed to identify that of the 19 HIAs ordered last weekend, 14 directions came from club doctors.
That the new awareness comes with new information also seemed to be overlooked.
And while the influence of doctors and lawyers and us slobs in the media is an irritation for those who just want to get on with footy the way it used to be played, it’s never going to happen.
The grown-up solution is to find a way forward.
For instance, what is the game doing about finding a solution?
Every new change introduced in response to concussions is a treatment for the symptom, not the cause.
By the time any action is taken — club doctor or independent doctor, dressing room tests, required time on the sideline — the player is already concussed, or at least believed to be.
Tackling styles are not being encouraged to change.
This is worth reflecting on, given the massive change in tackling styles that first began about 20 years ago when Ricky Stuart’s Sydney Roosters caught and held a ballrunner up long enough for his teammates to get in and gang tackle the ballrunner backwards.
Soon after, jujitsu infected the game and all sorts of trickery has taken place in tackles and, since then, the game has been playing catch-up.
To aid the catch and wrestle technique tackling styles have developed from tacklers shifting their head to the side and driving through with their shoulders, or rolling back with momentum, to a more upright position so ballrunners can be held long enough for teammates to join the tackle.
Some years back Ron Massey called me with an idea.
“They’ve got to bring back the reward for the legs tackle,” he said.
He could see where the game was going and got there ahead of everybody. The only other person I heard say the same was Bob Fulton.
The game failed, though, and now it is so far down the track of this new style of tackling it is almost impossible to peel back.
But is that a reason for the game to not try?
Concussions in sport are a worldwide problem.
There are several reasons given why.
Much has been around recent medical evidence which simply wasn’t known before.
For a long time the closest any sport came to recognising the damage caused by repeated concussions was the obvious one, when a bell from a passing bus would send old prize-fighters into a crouch and they’d start shadow boxing, the poor old buggers accused of being “punch drunk”.
The discovery of tau, a protein in the brain of dead former athletes, changed much of the conversation. The tau was waste left from the damage of a concussion and slowly inhibited the brain.
The other change is people are simply living longer and, while we can take blood thinners to ward off stroke and get a valve replaced or a stent inserted to buy another 10 years instead of a heart attack, not much has been discovered about prolonging brain health.
So prevention remains the best cure.
And while no coach wants to see his player injured or would ever want to contribute to any long-term failing health so little is known about the cause — along with alternative voices refusing to concede anything is wrong — that many from within remain steadfast on making no change until forced.
Does this put the onus on the NRL, through rule changes, or penalties for dangerous techniques or rewards for safer techniques, to try to slowly enforce an overhaul in tackling styles?
While the NFL has had to shift ground equally as fast as the NRL in the wake of concussion evidence, tackling styles have barely changed.
Players can no longer lead with their helmets, but from a layman’s point of view the game looks almost the same.
NRL players tackle noticeably differently to how they did 20 or 40 or 60 years ago.
Much of the blame will be variously attributed to bigger bodies, fitter bodies, the 10m rule, better training, professionalism and all of that.
Late footwork at the line which got Victor Radley on Sunday.
But the upright position where they often connect first with the chest instead of the shoulder also brings the head far more into play than it used to, for both the ballrunner and the tackler.
It was a style that was allowed to dominate the game because the rules allowed it to happen.
It will take a lot of work to repeal it, but maybe the only way out is the way back.
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