Dipper reveals what really happened to him in 1989 grand final

Dipper should’ve been celebrating the 1989 grand final with his teammates, but he was instead holed up in hospital with a priest.

Hawthorn premiership hero Robert ‘Dipper’ Dipierdomenico has relived the trauma of the 1989 grand final when he ended up in hospital with a priest clutching his hand.

Dipper said he was on his last breath when the siren sounded after he played on with broken ribs and a punctured lung following a hit from Geelong’s Gary Ablett.

“Last seconds of the game I’ve gone from the wing right across the middle and I’ve thrown myself on the ball and then the siren went,’’ Dipper tells camp mates on I’m a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!.

DiPierdomenico was badly injured in the 1989 Grand Final.

“And then I’ve just collapsed and then my teammate, my captain, Michael Tuck, he picked me up and he goes ‘we’ve won, we’ve won’, and I think he just squeezed the last bit of breath out of me.

“I was rushed to hospital and they gave me adrenaline and when I was in there someone grabbed my hand from behind and it was the priest. He give me some calming words.

It was serious.”

Dipper said his body had started to implode during the match.

“There’s three things you don’t want to hear on a footy field. Three words — it’s yours Dipper,’’ he said.

Robert DiPierdomenico on I’m A Celebrity ... Get Me Out Of Here!

“The ball kicked in the air, you’re standing underneath it, there’s 100,000 people watching. The MCG will make you or break you, forever. Not just for the day. You can’t look back, you can’t look right. It’s up in the air and that’s your moment. The reason why you train is because you hear voices. What your teammates say, you do.

“I played right through it. I went back and got crunched. As I kept playing my body was starting to implode. It felt like that bubble wrap.... like any player you don’t want to come off.”

Dipper added: “Through the 80s it was a tough game. You didn’t come off the ground, you stayed on the ground, you wanted to stay on the ground. If you had blood on your nose you’d wipe it on your jumper. If you had a cut on your head you just wipe it away. There was no way known you wanted to come off the ground.”