Ex-Richmond player Ty Zantuck gets ‘horrible feelings’ when near Punt Rd after head knocks

Ex-Richmond player Ty Zantuck says he gets “horrible feelings” and goosebumps when he’s near Punt Rd after repeated head knocks while playing for the Tigers.

A “traumatised” ex-Richmond footballer says he gets “horrible feelings” when he goes near Punt Rd after suffering repeated head knocks and a chronic back injury at the club.

Ty Zantuck, who is suing Richmond and its doctors over claims of poor medical treatment, said he’d only been to a handful of games after the end of his professional career because he felt too “awkward” to watch in the stands.

“I still get goosebumps any time I go there,” he told the Supreme Court via video link on Friday after contracting Covid-19.

“I just don’t have good feelings there.”

Zantuck says he copped repeated head knocks while playing for Richmond. Picture: AAP

Mr Zantuck played 68-games for the Tigers until 2004, where he says he was given up to 20 epidurals and dozens of injections to get him on the field with a back injury.

His lawyers, in reviewing game-day footage for the case where he’d received back pain injections, noticed repeated head knocks and referred him for medical advice.

In September, the 40-year-old was diagnosed with traumatic encephalopathy syndrome, which indicated a progressive degenerative brain disease.

It was a “ticking time bomb inside his head”, lawyer Lachlan Armstrong QC said.

The court heard a big issue in the case was a severe lack of notes or medical records of Mr Zantuck’s treatment 18-years earlier, which disadvantaged the club and its doctors if the matter was to go to trial.

The lawyer for former club doctor Christopher Bradshaw said it was “fanciful” and a “conspiracy theory” that documents would have been deliberately destroyed or not been produced, as claimed by Mr Zantuck.

Ty Zantuck with his sons Jagger and Zepplin. Picture: Wayne Taylor

Neill Murdoch QC confirmed Dr Bradshaw made notes when he gave players medical injections, but “not on every occasion”.

That followed a claim by Mr Armstrong that it wasn’t Dr Bradshaw’s practice to take notes, which was a “problem of his own making”.

“We are talking about a professional sporting club, not the Eltham Under 9s,” he said.

Mr Armstrong said the Tigers’ and doctors’ objections against giving Mr Zantuck an extension of time so he could run his case were “at best, weak”.

Mr Zantuck claimed he sought his medical records in 2006 in a text to Richmond doctor Gregory Hickey in 2006.

“I got no response,” he said.

“Not yes or no – just nothing.”

Mr Zantuck says he now feels awkward watching football.

Asked by Dr Hickey’s lawyer Justin Hooper why he didn’t follow up or go to the club with his request, Mr Zantuck said, “I wasn’t going to go to Punt Rd”.

“Every time I’d drive past there, I’d just – horrible feelings from my time there.”

Mr Hooper said Dr Hickey didn’t recall receiving his text.

The court heard Mr Zantuck sought legal advice a decade ago but was told a case against the club would be “too hard, too lengthy and too expensive to go up against the AFL”, and he didn’t have the money at the time.

The former footballer said following his professional career, he couldn’t drive or hold down a job and would play three or four games for cash at local clubs before they realised he was “useless”.

Those local matches were “basically all I could live off,” Mr Zantuck said.

“(I was) trying to get anything I could just to buy some food.”

Associate Justice Mary-Jane Ierodiaconou will hand down her decision on Mr Zantuck’s extension of time application at a later date.