‘Capper is an icon … they should be wrapping their arms around him’
Warwick Capper forgets where his only son lives and, unknowingly, tells the same stories, over and over again. In an exclusive interview the Australian football icon opens up about his brain damage worries | WATCH
Warwick Capper is struggling.
“I can still remember most of the games,” he says, “but sometimes I forget people’s names.”
He looks around the room. “I’m f..ked if I know this guy’s name, or your name – tell me again?”
“Jess.”
“F..k me, I might remember that. Yeah, see, it takes me a while to comprehend it.”
The one-time Sydney Swans star is adapting to his new life. He still does celebrity appearances at pub and club nights, but it’s not like the glory days when he toured with notorious characters such as crooked cop Roger Rogerson and killer Mark “Chopper” Reid, telling stories.
VIDEO WARNING: EXPLICIT LANGUAGE
These days the crowds are smaller and the one-time footy great writes reminder notes to himself.
“I put 20 points down. I do get a bit lost in the last couple of years,” he says, then confesses: “I write my whole day now, in my phone, so I don’t forget.”
Warwick “the Wiz” Capper’s career has been such a whirlwind he could be forgiven for losing track of it.
AFL legend. Swans pin-up boy. Cultural icon. Pop singer. Porn star. Would-be politician. Brothel owner.
But now, at 61, Capper’s memory loss could be a sign of something more insidious.
There’s his speech, which has become harder – sometimes impossible – to follow.
There’s the lack of any kind of filter – always an issue with Capper, but now so glaring he was thrown out of the MCG after an “incident” with a woman, and he says he’s been banned from AFL grounds for six months. “Been banned for being rude to a girl,” Capper says.
And most obvious of all, his rambling answers to simple questions. His train of thought swings wildly. In our interview he repeats the same stories, over and over.
Many of the stories are about head knocks. Too many to count, he says.
“You just didn’t care back then. I got knocked right out,” Capper says. “Eyes were a bit dazey and came a bit cloudy, but you didn’t want to be a weak prick, you’re trying to kick a hundred.”
“They used to go like this,” he says, holding up a finger and passing it across his eyes. “All right, a bit dazey, have a five-minute rest.”
“I still came back on – didn’t know where I f..kin’ was though.”
The memory seems to stir something. The fog lifts for a moment. He reels off the names of mates who’ve been diagnosed with traumatic brain injury.
Former Essendon and Geelong ruckman John Barnes: “He’s stuffed, he got knocked out 30 times. He has seizures, sometimes five a day. He’s pretty bad.”
Brownlow-winning Carlton midfielder Greg “Diesel” Williams: “He’s a bit dazed in the eyes, he’s pretty bad.”
Hawthorn rover John “the Rat” Platten: “He’s the worst I’ve seen, how bad he looks. He thinks he’s Ron Barassi. He got bashed every week. I did shows with him. He couldn’t do it at the end, that’s a bit sad.”
On the two occasions we meet, he tells these three brain-injured footballers’ stories three times over, each time offering up the information about Barnes, “Diesel” and Platten, as if it’s new.
As for his own condition, Capper swings between avoidance and grudging acceptance.
“I started going downhill a bit I think about seven or eight years ago, just didn’t feel as good,” he admits. “I’m just not quite as switched on.”
“I’m a bit pissed off with the AFL,” he says. “They’re finally waking up, 30 years later and they’re copping it because there wasn’t much duty of care, was there? I just got told – don’t be a baby, just give it a rub, you’ll be right. Just give it five minutes’ rest’. That’s bad, 40 times, isn’t it?”
Capper recently participated in the AFL’s Past Player concussion program and has undergone the standard fMRI scans. As part of the program, Capper says, he took part in “three hours” of memory and cognitive tests. He also seen two psychiatrists. He says he is yet to receive the final results or any explanation for them.
However, on the day of the test Capper asked the examiner how he’d gone. “She said, ‘I’m not supposed to tell you, but pretty bad … you failed a few things. Not great’.”
Turning point
For those who’ve watched his gradual decline, that’s not a surprise.
Lisa Arocca, Capper’s long-time partner, knows something is wrong.
The most alarming moment came just last year when in an Uber, the driver turned to Capper and asked who he was visiting on the Gold Coast. He said his son, Indiana. The driver asked Capper: “Where’s your son living?”
Capper turned to Lisa, worried, and said worried: “I can’t remember.” In the next breath he said to Lisa: “Maybe I have got a problem.”
“That really made me think there was something wrong,” Arocca tells The Australian. “This was bad because one thing Warwick had was a strong memory; he remembered everything.”
A few weeks ago she was cleaning out her wardrobe and had bagged up clothes in the hallway and told Capper she would take them to a charity shop. “Leave them there, I am going to donate them,” she told him.
“Sounds great, OK,” Capper said.
An hour later he had thrown them all in the bin. “I told you not to put them in the bin,” Arocca said.
“Oh,” Capper replied.
“He had a blank look on his face,” she said, adding: “In spurts he is fine, and then he isn’t.”
Arocca says Capper telling the same stories over and over again, like they are new pieces of information, is a regular occurrence.
She said while people might often see the outlandish side of her partner, to her he is a sensitive, gentle, caring man.
“He has a heart of gold,” she said. “He’s never argumentative, but it’s like he’s in denial that he has anything wrong with him. I noticed when he spoke to you, all he could talk about was the other players having things wrong with them. He’s not really talking about himself … I think he’s not accepting it … the only time he has was when he forgot where his son lived.
“But I know he doesn’t want to admit all this. It’s really sad.”
She adds: “If you look at a video of him, as an 18-, 19-year-old, even in his 20s, well, even when I first met him in his 50s, he knew what he was doing … but now he is different.”
‘Rollercoaster ride’ with Capper
Even Capper’s appearance on Fox Footy’s Open Mike in 2013 shows the former star footballer was in a better state 12 years ago in comparison to his presentation today.
Several years ago Capper received an email – it’s one seared into Arocca’s memory – and a reminder now of how much the incredible full forward was physically targeted.
“I am writing to you, we were told to get on the ground and hit you, kick you and do what we could to get you off the field, you held you own, we couldn’t get near you, you were amazing and I have the utmost respect for you as a player and I always will,” she recounted of the email.
Capper, who has been diagnosed with ADHD, says he doesn’t take drugs, apart from over-the-counter tablets to help him sleep, and is not a drinker. Arocca says that’s true. When Capper’s not doing speaking events, they live a very quiet life and like watching shows such as The Block or MAFS.
While Capper has always been a high-energy, chaotic person to live with, Arocca knows their path is different right now, that something has changed, but she forges on.
“He’s always been a bit radical but now it is a constant rollercoaster ride of being forgetful … I do get tired but I just take it day by day,” she says. “I just have to roll with it. We’ll just push on.”
Capper’s longtime manager, Peter Jess, isn’t prepared to just roll with it – or let his client do so. The veteran AFL players agent believes that’s just what the AFL wants.
“They hope that with many of these guys, they’re just waiting for them to fall off the perch and die before they deal with these claims,” Jess says.
He’s known Capper since the star player was just a kid, playing for Oakleigh Districts Football Club, “fresh-faced, blond-haired, full of life and just natural”.
“Warwick is Warwick, but you can tell he’s changed, both in terms of demeanour and his ability to recognise things, and in how he thinks and talks,” Jess said.
Jess says now more than ever Capper has trouble discerning “right from wrong”, and being banned from AFL grounds is a case in point. “This is not the real Warwick, this should have been a warning sign to the AFL, not to bar (him) but find out why he has this repeat dysfunctional behaviour, a classic sign that (he) has frontal lobe damage, where they struggle to process right from wrong,” he said. “It’s f..king frightening.”
AFL accused of ‘corporate bastardry’
Jess is dismissive of the AFL’s reliance on fMRI scans alone, which have found no brain injury in several players later shown by other tests such as magnetoencephalography (MEG) to be suffering massive brain trauma.
Jess wants Capper to take a MEG scan, but the AFL has so far refused to fork out the $8000 the test costs.
The player advocate has paid for more than a dozen MEG scans for other clients out of his own pocket – victims much more damaged than Capper, and less able to pay.
Jess says it’s time for the AFL to start funding more meaningful investigations into the health of its past and present players.
His anger at the AFL is palpable. Anger at the lack of care for dozens of former players. Anger that the governing body’s only recent interaction with Capper has been to ban him from games.
He says players such as Capper should be better supported and he has long advocated for an NFL-style compensation fund for all former players.
The AFLPA, funded by the AFL, is set to announce this week an expanded hardship and injury fund, but Jess doesn’t think it will be enough.
“The problem with the current fund proposed by the AFLPA is that it has not had detailed metric analysis of the cohort, the extent of their both neurological and orthopaedic injury, and the ones that need third-party care,” he said.
“My fear is that this fund will not be properly resourced to meet the needs of the cohort’s level of injury we are seeing.”
Jess says more should be done now to look after Capper.
“Once again, it’s another act of corporate bastardry. This guy is an icon of the sport, he’s created millions of dollars for the sport. They should have wrapped their arms around him and got him proper treatment, and they haven’t done that.”
Capper is not feeling sorry for himself. Unlike many of his mates, he’s still out and about, sharing the Warwick Capper love around.
“At least I know what’s wrong now,” he says. “I’m not a cripple, I’m not in a wheelchair yet, but they give you tablets for that shit.
“I’ll be all right. Hopefully I don’t get worse. You earn your money, don’t you?”
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