FifthQtr Foundation: Paul Vander Haar, Simon Madden and Terry Daniher on life after football, support for past AFL players
Paul Vander Haar was walking up his driveway when he blacked out and broke his femur. The ex-Bomber opens up to Michael Warner about his struggles and the need for greater support for ex-footballers.
AFL
Don't miss out on the headlines from AFL. Followed categories will be added to My News.
One moment Paul Vander Haar was walking up his drive. The next he was lying in a hospital with a badly broken leg.
It was the fourth time he’d blacked out and collapsed in recent years.
He also has chronic back pain which left him unable to walk more than a few metres for 18 months.
And he is struggling with mental health issues.
But the ‘Flying Dutchman’ - who famously got knocked into next week by Dermott Brereton in the 1989 Essendon-Hawthorn semi final at Waverley - says he’s had no support from the AFL or the players’ union.
His old teammates and opponents are no better off, he says.
The Bombers legend, a member of the club’s famous back-to-back 1984-85 premiership sides, doesn’t want payouts or sympathy.
He just wants some help.
Vander Haar, 67, is the latest in a string of former footy stars to come forward and detail a harrowing story of post-career torment amid rising scrutiny on the game’s treatment of its retired heroes.
Two of his premiership teammates - Simon Madden and Terry Daniher - are also speaking out in support of the FifthQtr Foundation, a new independent group for battling former stars left behind by the billion-dollar industry.
“I don’t want to sound like a whinger. There are plenty of people around who have the same circumstances. I always look at life and I go, ‘I’m really struggling, but then a guy comes past in a wheelchair and I think, ‘shit how lucky are we?’,” Vander Haar says.
“But I’ve had a hip replacement and seven operations on my right knee and it’s still not good. I’ve had four pass outs, where I’ve just been walking along or just sitting down and all of a sudden I just pass out and end up in hospital.
“It’s just a loss of blood where your blood pressure drops. I’ll just be sitting there and all of a sudden I’ll fall off the chair.
“The last one I had, I’d just started walking up the driveway and passed out and broke my femur, the main part of the leg just under the hip. I was on crutches for six or seven months.
“My whole body aches. I wake up every day and it feels like I’ve played 10 games of footy in a row and I can hardly move.
“I’ve had a really bad back and I keep breaking ribs just leaning over the cabin of my ute grabbing my tool box.
“I’m trying different medications, but just getting sick of going to the hospitals and doctors and getting referrals and all that crap.”
Asked about his mental health, Vander Haar says: “I’m struggling with that.”
On his history of head knocks, the Dons great says: “The biggest one was when Dermott Brereton got me at Waverley in 1989. I don’t remember anything about it. I copped it and went back on again and got reported for hitting (Greg) Dear, and can’t even remember doing it.
“We went to court to fight it (his suspension from the preliminary final) to say that I’d gone back on with concussion and I didn’t know what was going on.
“We won and Sheeds (coach Kevin Sheedy) goes, ‘Oh, good you can play’ and I said. ‘No. no. I’m not good. I’m still suffering with this concussion and I’m not going to play.
“But I still look at that incident and go, ‘well that was the way footy was played’. You watch an old game now for a quarter and there would be reports every five seconds.
“I had heaps of them (concussions) over the years. I copped plenty, but you kept going not realising what the consequences were.”
“Vanda” has worked since his playing days began in pool and spa installation, first with his father and later alongside son Todd.
“I can’t stand for long. I went for 18 months where my back was that bad I could walk no further than 20 or 30 feet,” he says.
“My body is that sore, I just can’t physically do much. Todd says, ‘Get away from the edge of the pool before you’ll fall in’. I’m basically supervising and he does all the work.”
Asked what support he’s had from the league and union, he says: “I haven’t had anything. To be honest, I thought it was only for the guys that couldn’t afford it, but I’m getting to the stage now where I can’t afford it. I’m back in debt again now and I’ve got to keep on working.”
A new set of teeth recently set him back $50,000 — the result of a broken jaw playing for the Bombers in the early 80s which forced him to wear a metal brace in his mouth.
He lost his front teeth twice playing footy.
Vander Haar said he had former teammates in even worse shape “who lived day by day”.
“There are a lot of blokes worse than me, but then again, I’ve worked my arse off to be able to afford to do that, too,” he says.
“The way I look at it is, I employ people and we’ve got to pay their Workcare, and Essendon were employing us as sports people. So if you’re injured you should go on Workcare.
“I just can’t get motivated and I’m sleeping 10 hours a day. I’m just too sore.”
He says the AFL and AFL Players’ Association needs to do more for retired players.
“It’s not the money that I’m after, I’m just trying to find somebody who can come up with some solutions. I just want to find a remedy. I’m just getting sick of it,” he says.
Madden, who played 378 games for the Bombers, says the FifthQtr’s push for a retired players welfare officer at all 18 AFL clubs will be a “game-changer in preventing past players from feeling that sense of helplessness and not understanding what support, including financial, they can receive”.
Daniher, an AFL Hall of Famer, says it was courageous players such as Vander Haar that captivated crowds.
“Week in week out players put their body on the line to entertain their fans,” Daniher says.
“There are not many occupations where the expectation is to be fearless and go hard with the
potential to be in physical danger … yet the AFL is an industry with no Workcover.
“If we expect players to go into battle every week and risk their health and wellbeing, there has to be some insurance cover, like there is for every other occupation, to ensure that if there are life-changing injuries, there is some level of support.”
Established by Carlton premiership great Ken Hunter and Peter Venables, the father of West Coast concussion victim Daniel Venables, the FifthQtr wants past player involvement in future collective bargaining agreement talks between the AFL and AFLPA.
Physical hardship, mental health, anxiety, depression and loss of identity were major issues facing past players identified in a recent FifthQtr survey.
The group also aims to offer support services to community level footballers and their families.
Vander Haar, recruited from Ringwood, played 201 games for Essendon between 1977 and 1990.
SOS’ chance to cash in clouded by legacy of Silvagni name
Once an afterthought, Jack Silvagni’s contract call looms as one of the most pivotal at Carlton this year, and his output in 2025 looks likely to put a further strain on the Blues’ tight salary cap.
Undermanned Magpie masterclass heaps more pressure on Dockers
Premiership heroes left home, on the road off a five-day break. No worries for Craig McRae’s Magpies, but it wasn’t a perfect night in Perth with one star knocked out with a nasty concussion.