Carlton great Mark Maclure reveals he has early signs of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease

Mark Maclure concedes punches to his head during his decorated playing career have taken their toll. MARK ROBINSON chats to the Blues great about his ‘scary’ health diagnosis.

Mark Maclure at an AFL Grand Final lunch.

The world of Mark Maclure is changing.

And the Carlton great who pulls no punches with his larger-than-life commentary on football is scared about what happens next.

Maclure has been diagnosed with “very early’’ signs of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.

He is 69.

He suspects it is the result of the constant “punches to my head’’ he received during his decorated 243-game career for the Blues because his family does not have a history of either.

“It’s a real difficult area because who really knows about the brain,’’ he says. “Unless you’ve got it, you don’t really know.’’

Married to Virginia for 40 years – she paints the current situation as more challenging than what her husband does – it was only in the past couple of years when Maclure noticed the small things.

Mark Maclure dishes a handball. Picture: Getty Images

At first, it was forgetting where the keys were, or the wallet, or the mobile phone. Then, on the golf course, he’d miss counting shots.

Also, the man with the sharp wit and sometimes sharper tongue was, at times, too sharp. Frustration grew with his fear, which is a terrible combination.

“It’s different,’’ he says of his situation. “You’re a bit dull if you understand what I’m saying.’’

Can you enlighten us?

“When I’m playing golf, I will say I had a five and they say no, it was a six, and I say, ‘OK, I had a six’. Sometimes you forget little things like that,” Maclure says. “It’s interesting. It’s scary for me, it’s scary for Virginia as well. Sometimes, you just wake up and I feel it right now, it’s just a little dullish-type thing. I’m frightened about my head now, if it gets hit.’’

About a year ago, he decided to seek a professional assessment. A doctor first. Then a neurologist and brain scans and a meeting with a neuropsychologist. That involved memory tests around words, sentences, images and numbers.

Maclure lands awkwardly in the 1981 grand final.

On this day, as he sat on his couch at his Bentleigh home, Maclure clearly was not a broken man. But he was breaking nonetheless.

“I feel empty in a sense about what’s happened over the years,’’ he says. “It’s been a long time since I finished playing, ’86 was my last game, the grand final against Hawthorn, and we got beat, and since then I’ve tried to keep myself fit by going to the gym, walking, playing golf, some boxing at Moorabbin.

“But my brain has been bashed a lot. There were a lot concussions.’’

He says he suffered four or five “massive ones’’ and countless others.

“Knocked out, vomiting in the doctor’s rooms, falling apart, and they wanted you to go back on the ground, ‘You’ve got to go back on’, and a couple of times I said, ‘I can’t go back on the ground’. A couple of times I did go back on, it’s frightening.

“That’s what we did back then, we stood up and away we went. It was brutal. That’s the only problem I had really badly, the concussion stuff, and it’s made a mess of me in a sense.

“The position I played (centre half-forward) wasn’t an easy job. They wanted to kill ya. The ’70s and ’80s, it was brutal. It was a brutal time of the world. Now, sometimes you think the AFL would’ve tried to pull some if it up, but they didn’t do anything.’’

Maclure hits the ground in 1977.

He recalled one game, playing on a bruiser who had been recruited from South Australia, who Maclure claims continually punched him in marking contests.

“He was a goose. I remember playing on him and every time I went for the ball he punched me in the back of the head. He didn’t try to go for the ball,’’ he says. “He was always behind, he never got in front. In some of the games I played, I reckon I got hit 10-15 times and the umpire didn’t do anything about it. They reckon they didn’t see it. Of course, they didn't. How many games did I play, how many occasions was I belted? It wasn’t easy, it was rugged.

“I got him back once, whacked his head into the goalpost. He said, ‘What are you doing?’ I said, ‘That’s one, I need to get another 25 in before we’re even’.’’

His long-term memory is intact. He remembers his opponents – Billy Picken from Collingwood, Ronnie Andrews from Essendon. Harvey Merrigan from Fitzroy. “The memory of what you do is very much unforgettable,’’ Maclure says

Despite his predicament, he wouldn’t swap his career. “I played in four grand finals and we won three,’’ he says. “I loved playing footy. That was my joy. It was about the connection between the players, with the people, trying to build a team which works well, the camaraderie, going into the aftermatch. The training was brutal and hard, but I felt fantastic. I’d do it again if I could.’’

Carlton's Mark Maclure, Peter Bosustow, Des English, Wayne Johnston, David McKay, Geoff Southby and Alex Marcou sing the theme song in the rooms after a victory.

His fondness for the heroics of yesteryear, however, is a contradiction to his anxiety about what lies ahead.

“It’s interesting, isn’t it. I’m OK now, I’ve got a pretty good bunch of friends around me, and Virginia has been very good,” he says. “But I want to keep going, travel the world, do a bit of stuff, you know.

“I didn’t know I had a problem until a year ago. It’s a slow burn and you forget things. It’s hard to talk about.

“It’s almost wrecked your life in a sense. I don’t want to be rude, but you don’t know until you’ve got it. The more confronting thing is the future. What is the future? It’s a big question. What am I going to be like in 10 years’ time? A zombie?

“What’s next? That’s what we have to be talking about.’’

Maclure is a part of the FIFTHQTR Foundation, which is a Ken Hunter-led organisation which supports AFL and AFLW past players to achieve positive mental health and wellbeing.

This year, the foundation, with the support of the majority of AFL cubs, sent a survey to past players. About 650 players responded with some “horror’’ stories which will be presented to the AFL.

The foundation wants the AFL, the Players’ Association and the past player cohort to “come together’’.

“We want to join them, we don’t want to fight them,’’ Maclure says. “That’s the way we should do it. There’s a lot of blokes out there struggling.

“I’m worried about a lot of blokes who are silent and hurting. Back then, everyone copped it, it was frightening sometimes. Maybe footy was too brutal and maybe there’s a reckoning here. I had 12 years of it and it doesn’t become fun at the end.

“But I’m OK, I’m not dead. I’m not falling over mumbling on the ground. I’ve got light dementia and Alzheimer’s disease and I’m taking medication.’’

A robust media commentator on TV and radio for 30 years, Maclure will be a special comments man for SEN at Sunday’s game between his Blues and Hawthorn.

“I still love the game,’’ he says.