He hit like a truck … and died with CTE. The tragedy of league cult hero

Before rugby league cracked down on the kamikaze tackles and high shots, a little Bulldogs player was making his name as the second coming of David “Cement” Gillespie.

Kyle “Killer” White was built like a halfback, but no one dared tell him to play like one. It didn’t matter what number was on his back, he would hunt down some of the game’s most feared forwards.

In just his 11th top-grade game for the Bulldogs in 1990 at Belmore, he sprinted out of the defensive line, launched through the air and crashed into Raiders legend Dean Lance, who was the cornerstone of a star-studded team which included names like Meninga, Stuart, Lazarus and Belcher.

If that tackle had happened today, White would be lucky to play again this season. Back then, it meant instant ascension to cult hero status.

“That’s one of the biggest hits I’ve ever seen on a football paddock,” the commentator at the time says. “Have a look at the truck that just hit him.”

The truck was White.

Kyle White launches himself at Dean Lance during his playing career for the Bulldogs.Credit: Facebook

For years afterwards – with Western Suburbs, Illawarra and later Widnes and Workington Town in England – White would play with the same fearlessness in a top-grade career which spanned a decade.

Now, nine months after his death at just 53, it can be revealed White died with the degenerative brain disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), which is linked to repeated head trauma.

White joins former Canterbury teammate Steve Folkes, Eastern Suburbs player Peter Moscatt and ex-State of Origin player and Cowboys premiership-winning coach Paul Green as former rugby league stars diagnosed with the condition.

“He had severe CTE,” says professor Michael Buckland from the Australian Sports Brain Bank, which made White’s diagnosis after an autopsy.

Kyle White during his playing days with the Bulldogs. White’s stepdaughter Eliza Tyndall and fiancee Melanie Sullivan with one of his playing jerseys.Credit: Palani Mohani/Dion Georgopoulos

“It was stage three out of four. It was not dissimilar to what we found in Steve Folkes. He had low-level Alzheimer’s disease as well, and there’s good evidence if you have CTE it accelerates all these other degenerative conditions.”

The coroner found the cause of White’s death was a heart attack. After fielding an inquiry from the Australian Sports Brain Bank shortly after his passing, White’s fiancee, Melanie Sullivan, agreed to donate his brain for research.

Kyle White.

White’s fierce nature on the field belied a creative side off it, as he pursued his main interest in music, releasing songs and often venturing to Nashville to further his writing (he even performed on The Footy Show).

“Music made him happy,” Sulliva_ n says. “His kids made him happy. I made him happy. The dogs made him happy.”

But his mental health deteriorated as he lived unknowingly with CTE, descending into alcoholism, a brief period of homelessness and even imprisonment for a domestic violence charge.

“Michael [Buckland] said, ‘Does it make sense now?’ And it does,” Sullivan says.

“But at the time, you’re like, ‘Why?’ He could be a loving person, but he also had issues. He could remember in 1990 he played against the Canberra Raiders, where the game was and this is who he tackled. He could remember all of that. But everyday things, he would have to write it down.

“There’s been a lot of actions that have been hell and we’ve had to live through it. I’m not saying it can be stopped because it can’t be diagnosed until after death, but mental health and CTE run parallel.”

Only last week, the Victorian state coroner recommended the AFL limit the number of contact training sessions after handing down findings from the death of former Richmond player Shane Tuck, who died with CTE.

The Rugby Football League in the United Kingdom will also lower the legal tackle height to below the armpit for all levels of competition from 2025.

Former Maroons coach Paul Green.Credit: Getty

But in White’s era during the 1990s, rugby league was brutal. His family say they couldn’t accurately measure how many concussions or sub-concussive hits he endured during his career. But it would be many dozens, potentially in the hundreds.

His stepdaughter, Eliza Tyndall, whom White helped raise since she was one, loved referring to him as “Killer” as he regaled her with old stories from his playing days. (White also has a biological son, Levi.)

But as his mental health deteriorated, White started talking less and less about his on-field career, which was always destined for the top level after being an Australian Schoolboys representative.

“He was very proud to tell Levi this was something he could do, but not so much later on,” Tyndall says. “And I’ve got a big black bag full of VHS tapes [of his games]. It was insane. It made me proud. That will always live on.”

There was a brief period when White’s life changed forever.

In 2006, he spent two weeks in a coma after contracting pneumonia. When he woke up, life would never be the same. He’d become a father while in the coma, as Levi was born 16 weeks premature. White’s mother had also died, and he never had a chance to say goodbye. “It was all very traumatic for him,” Tyndall says.

It started to take its toll. After moving to Queensland a decade later, White struggled with alcoholism. He’d always been around its influence – he ran a pub in Widnes while he was still playing – but after a relationship broke down, he found himself without a home and the subject of a public plea for his safety after going missing. He was found heavily affected by alcohol on the side of a road near Warwick, where a truck driver took him to hospital.

In the words of Sullivan and Tyndall, White was humiliated by the media reports of his welfare, and checked himself out of a Victorian rehabilitation clinic which rugby league officials had paid for.

He came to Sydney early in 2020 and was engaged to Sullivan a few months later. Before the end of the year, he was arrested on a domestic violence charge. The pair reconciled upon his release from prison and undertook counselling, with plans to marry this year.

In his final months, White would sit on his couch and use a massage gun on his dogs for hours as a form of therapy. He had been meaningfully employed again. He and Sullivan even started helping homeless people in the Penrith area. White would take them cooked meals and buy water or soft drinks.

“He would say, ‘I used to be in your predicament. Here’s a warm meal or do you need a blanket?’ He tried to do as much as he could to help people,” Sullivan says. “He was getting himself better. He had his problems, don’t get me wrong, but I thought he was doing pretty well.”

Tyndall says: “He would say to those people he was helping, ‘You might be on the streets now, but you might not be in six months. If I can get through it, you can get through it.’ People kept asking after he died, ‘How was he?’ I kept saying he was doing really well.

“He was a good person. Everyone’s got demons. Unfortunately, we didn’t know what it was. It was the CTE that was prompting him to make these impulse decisions, making him aggressive.”

On a normal early autumn night this year, White went upstairs in his townhouse to go to bed. He never woke up.

But his family are determined to ensure his legacy is carried on, to alert others about the signs of living with someone potentially suffering from CTE.

“He really did have a wonderful last couple of years,” Tyndall says. “There was no indication he was living an unhappy life. He seemed quite content and building himself back up again.

“But we want people to understand the implications. How can you see if your dad, uncle or brother is dealing with CTE? How do we get them to scale back? We worry it’s only going to get worse in 20 or 30 years.

“Dad is not the first case of CTE. This is Michael’s whole mission and his work. I hope they encourage people as much as they can to protect themselves because we only have one body.”

If you or anyone you know needs support, call Lifeline on 131 114 or Beyond Blue on 1300 224 636.

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