NRL faces day of reckoning as dementia battle strikes rugby great Steve Mortimer
Four celebrated 1980s captains have now been diagnosed with early-onset dementia, as the sporting body faces mounting calls to act from yet another devastated family.
The family of rugby league legend Steve Mortimer has issued an impassioned plea for the NRL to keep stepping up safety measures that protect players from head knocks, as his wife declared she was certain his devastating dementia battle was a result of repeated on-field hits.
In a raw, powerful joint interview, Mortimer’s wife Karen and their adult children Andrew, Matt and Erin have opened up for the first time on the trauma of a decline that has left the adored Canterbury legend in full-time care in a nursing home at age 67.
Four celebrated 1980s captains – Mortimer, Wally Lewis, Mario Fenech and Ray Price – have now been diagnosed with early-onset dementia conditions, while it is understood others in the rugby league community are living silently with the illness.
Key figures in the game, including the NRL’s chief concussion consultants Chris Levi and Andrew Gardner, have publicly questioned the link between head knocks and degenerative brain disease.
Mrs Mortimer, who stressed her family’s love for rugby league, has no doubt football caused her husband’s early-onset dementia, first diagnosed at age 60.
“He had no hereditary dementia,” she said. “He was perfectly fit. He took care of his health. He worked out every single day. And he was just over 60 when he was diagnosed. So connect the dots …”
Mrs Mortimer said her husband was paying a cruel price for a wonderful career. “This disease is a thief,” she said.
Current players such as Roosters star Luke Keary have called for a reduction in contact at training as American football did nearly a decade ago. The NRL is considering the move for next season.
Sports neurologists have also called for a stand down period of four weeks for head injuries and for children not to tackle until the age of 12 to reduce exposure to head knocks.
The long-term impact of head knocks and concussion is becoming a trigger point in the game. Dr Gardner insists it will take a “generation or two of athletes” to prove repeated head knocks cause dementias such as chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE.
Professor Levi publicly attacked researchers in 2019, saying there was no proof that CTE was caused by head knocks.
“We’re increasingly concerned that the public is being fed information that is unbalanced and at times misleading,” Professor Levi said at the time.
Mortimer’s final coach at Canterbury, Phil Gould, this year dismissed the NRL’s use of an independent doctor as “the greatest abomination perpetrated on our game in history” and has described the concern around concussions as being fed by “misinformation” and “hysteria”.
Mrs Mortimer pleaded for the league to listen to experts such as the Australian Sports Brain Bank’s Michael Buckland, a neuropathologist who found CTE in the brains of prolific AFL players including Danny Frawley and league great and Cowboys’ coach Paul Green.
“I want them to listen to the people who know what they’re talking about; don’t listen to the people that are trying to put a veil over the problem or trying to lessen the problem altogether,” Mrs Mortimer said.
“This is an issue for all contact sports, including rugby and AFL. We can’t pretend anymore that it isn’t. We’ve got to get our head out of the sand.
“Take care of your players, check in on the families – not just during the good times, but when the times get tough.
“These players have given a lot to the game and there is more to be done there in supporting families in tough times.”
n 2022 in the 60-64 age group, 10,133 Australian men, or 1.4 per cent, were diagnosed with dementia.
Mortimer was diagnosed at 60 and Lewis at 63.
Dr Buckland said larger studies were “urgently” needed focusing on ex-professional contact sports players.
“Given the low rate of younger onset dementia in the general population, this statistic is disturbing,” he said.
He said former professional American football players had four-fold higher rates of clinically diagnosed Alzheimer’s disease and motor neurone disease compared with the general population, while ex-professional soccer players in Britain had Alzheimer’s listed on their death certificates at a five-fold higher rate.
“There is no reason to believe that ex-professional NRL and AFL players will be very different to these other playing groups,” he said.
“The Australian Sports Brain Bank, along with Concussion Legacy Foundation Australia, have repeatedly called for all contact sports in Australia to adopt CTE minimisation protocols that sit alongside their concussion protocols.
“CTE disease risk is related to cumulative exposure to repeated mild brain trauma, not to the number of concussions a player receives or how they are managed.”
Mrs Mortimer said that while she believed the NRL was moving in the right direction, it could do more.
Erin Mortimer said more families need to be supported and pointed to her friend Hayley Shaw’s experience. Ms Shaw told a recent Senate inquiry into concussion in sport that she and her brother Dan had not heard from the NRL since it was publicly announced her father, Canterbury great Steve Folkes, was found to have CTE post-mortem.
Erin implored the code to listen to families whose loved ones are or were suffering dementia.
Andrew Mortimer, who played in the lower grades, implored the sport to listen to players. “I feel that the NRL and the game is waking up to this as a much bigger issue and I’ll be the first one flying the flag for the game in any way, I’ll defend it to the death,” he said.
“I just encourage the game to keep going (in making the game safe). I think there needs to be continued research.”
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