NRL great Steve Mortimer’s family opens up about his heartbreaking dementia battle
At 67, rugby league great Steve Mortimer should be enjoying the golden years of sporting retirement. Instead, he’s in a nursing home. His family detail for the first time his heartbreaking battle with dementia.
It’s a Saturday afternoon and the greatest Bulldog of all time, Steve Mortimer, is back at Belmore.
The legendary Canterbury-Bankstown skipper known as “Turvey” has history in nearly every centimetre of this place. On its turf the 5’8’’ halfback would cut down outsized opponents with his signature cover tackles.
From its hill, the blue-and-white faithful savoured 13 seasons of Mortimer – an uncompromising era of brilliant and often brutal rugby league in which the “Dogs of War” held aloft four premierships from six grand finals.
The Mortimer imprint extends from the public bar (named in his honour) to the boardroom, where he served as both a director and the club’s chief executive.
Belmore Oval – Bulldogs HQ – is also the place where, several years back, Mortimer began to visit seemingly without cause. It was, his son Andrew now says, one of the first signs things were going wrong: quietly and cruelly, dementia was starting to take its slow grip on his life.
“He turned up unannounced which was generally always fine particularly with who he is but with no real purpose,” Andrew says. “It wasn’t diagnosed at the time, but obviously dementia was kicking in.”
When Mortimer was diagnosed after his 60th birthday, his family could not have known what lay in store.
Today, he looks out to the Belmore playing field and remembers that he liked to score tries “running left to right” away from the railway line. “I loved playing on every field I got to play on,” he says, gazing out at the hill.
He’s here to watch his nine-year-old grandson Harry play in an under-9s grand final. When the action begins, Steve gets into the game, yelling encouragement. Andrew, Harry’s dad, is coach.
“Great tackle,” Steve cries out, and later joins in the celebrations when St Christopher’s wins the premiership. Most of the Mortimer clan are there alongside him in the Belmore stands celebrating Harry’s victory when Steve turns to a little girl and asks “what’s your name?” – like he has never met the toddler before.
It’s Steve’s two-year-old granddaughter.
Legacy of head knocks
Mortimer is 67. In what should be his golden years, he lives in a nursing home to receive the full-time care he needs.
A proud, intelligent husband, father and grandfather, he has been left childlike in what is perhaps the most confronting example of a growing number of cases of early on-set dementia among retired rugby league stars.
As the league powerbrokers face accusations they are not fully accepting or properly acting on evidence of head-knock-related brain damage, Mortimer’s wife Karen and their adult children Andrew, Matt and Erin are telling their story publicly for the first time. They’re revealing the heartbreaking truth about Mortimer’s plight with one intention: to make the game they love safer for a younger generation of players.
They are calling for the league to include the families in conversations around the issue.
“I have no doubt the head knocks have caused Stephen’s early on-set dementia,” Karen says. “He had no hereditary dementia. 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 and now look at all the old reels of Stephen … he was a strong, fast, little man, a halfback that was tackled relentlessly.”
Mortimer, his family says, is paying a cruel price for a wonderful rugby league career. “This disease is a thief,” Karen says.
It has stolen Steve’s memories of walking Erin down the aisle last year and the chance to truly know his four grandchildren. It has stolen a time when a devoted husband should be travelling the world with his wife and unwinding after decades of hard work and building a tight-knit family.
“He’s such a wonderful family man, he’s set up a wonderful life for all of us and now he doesn’t get to enjoy the fruits of his labour,” Karen says, tears running down her face.
“He’s there … but he’s not. He doesn’t deserve this.”
League inspiration
Mortimer played hard and with heart, an inspirational leader who wore the Canterbury jumper in 272 first-grade games.
There were nine Tests for Australia and 16 matches for NSW.
Mortimer played alongside his brothers Peter and Chris at Belmore, his career giving them some of the most wonderful years of their lives. “It was a fabulous time,” Karen says.
But the hits were hard and Karen remembers the deep concern of herself and her fellow wives in the stands when Mortimer and his teammates were stretchered off the field – but then marvelling at how they “bounced back so quickly”.
“So many of them were stretchered off, and at the time, you thought; ‘oh it’s going to be OK, it’s fine’,” says Karen, a theatre director. “I can still remember the conversations constantly with him and his and other players in the team saying: ‘I don’t remember that second half of the game’.”
One of rugby league’s most famous images is Mortimer being chaired off by teammates after NSW’s first State of Origin series victory in 1985. His opposing skipper that night was Maroons legend Wally Lewis.
A year later, when Mortimer was captaining Canterbury in a quest for a premiership hat-trick, his side swept past Mario Fenech-led South Sydney in the first week of the finals, before eventually losing 4-2 to Ray Price’s Parramatta on grand final day.
Mortimer, Lewis, Price and Fenech – four celebrated captains of the same era all now trapped in battles with early-onset dementia.
The toll is growing. Mortimer’s teammate Steve Folkes and former Cronulla and Roosters player Paul Green were found to have CTE – the degenerative brain disease linked to head knocks – after they died. There are others who have not revealed their battles publicly. “I don’t know the number, but if you look at the eighties, I think there’d be a lot of players … (who) are suffering in silence,” Karen says.
Despite a growing body of anecdotal and scientific evidence linking head knocks and dementia, the NRL’s concussion expert, Sydney University’s Andrew Gardner, has said there needs to be more research and it would take a “generation or two of athletes” to prove repeated head knocks caused dementias such as CTE.
The Mortimers say there is no time for that – the game should continue to strengthen its safety measures regardless.
Life after football
In sporting retirement, Mortimer was a sharp, busy, energetic, fit and devoted family man, an architect of fun who would knit the extended family together – the one overseeing neighbourhood cricket games.
“He’s always been someone who would have had time for anyone, especially the outsider or the underdog and he’s also a bit of a larrikin, he loves a laugh,’’ says son Matt.
Mortimer powered through his 40s and 50s. A dynamic and driven football club executive and board member, he went on to run small businesses and was prominent in the media. By the time he hit 60, through hard work rather than meagre 1980s football money, he had saved up a solid nest egg.
The first signs something was amiss were deceptively benign.
“He was often misplacing things like his keys, wallet, and phone,” Erin says.
“It was his struggle to find easy words like car, remote, and TV. He’d often get frustrated when he couldn’t find the word, and be hard on himself. His paranoia and constant asking where mum was and then forgetting only a short while later to then ask again, was telling.”
Andrew, who was running a small business with his dad, watched him write longwinded emails. The incoherence of the notes rang alarm bells.
Mortimer’s short-term memory was “very bad”.
Whereas he used to give great “off the cuff” answers in media appearances, he now had to meticulously prepare and sit down with Karen to go through what he was going to say.
Later he would lose his train of thought in television interviews and would repeat points.
Matt, living in Chicago, noticed changes in his dad that seemed out of step when compared with his uncles Peter and Chris. “I’m like: you’re ageing really quickly, something’s off,’’ Matt says.
Their diligent family GP referred Mortimer to a specialist. The tests showed he had early on-set dementia at 60 in 2016. In the hours after his diagnosis, Mortimer turned to his wife at home and said: “No I don’t, I don’t have that.”
Mortimer’s characteristic blind determination to “beat it” kicked in. “That attitude of ‘I will conquer this’, that was his strength,” Karen says.
It was on a trip to London in 2019 that Karen realised her husband was in strife. One morning in a city they had visited together many times, he set off to fetch her a coffee before she started her work day at the theatre. An hour and half later passed and he had not returned. When he finally walked back in and with a grave look on his face he said: “I got lost.”
Then came the Covid lockdowns in 2020. “It was a horrible time for everyone but around this time we watched him spiral even more,” Erin says.
Mortimer didn’t want to wear a mask. He would venture out when he should have been at home and continue to visit the Bulldogs club when he should not have. The sullen, frustrated moods rose up more often than not. The family called the moods, which would arrive each evening, “sundowners”.
“They were complete mood swings which would come out of nowhere, and his attitude towards mum, and Andrew would worsen,” Erin says.
“It was very hard to watch on occasions. We learnt how to work with them, and not against them, sometimes with the assistance of dad being given medication.”
Erin would take her oldest daughter over as the sun was going down to calm her dad. “Being around his grandkids relaxed him, and still does, and I know it was a comfort to mum,” she says.
Andrew remembers the night before putting his dad into care as one of the most sleepless of his life. The decision caused the entire family much angst. It had been months of trying different solutions, like getting carers in and helping out with basic tasks, but it wasn’t working for anyone.
“It got to a point where it was definitely impacting mum’s physical and mental health, let alone dad’s decline,” Andrew says.
“Ultimately, it’s almost like if one person’s going down and if you try to carry their weight, you’re all going to go down together. So as heavy as it is to say that dad needs full time care, ultimately, it’s the best thing for him and for us as a family. And it hasn’t diminished the time we spend with each other … it’s just shifted, it’s just changed it.”
For years Karen watched her husband fight with all his might.
“But then slowly but surely it started to take over him – this disease is a thief. A thief.”
Football rallies round
Karen says she has been heartened by school friends making the trip to see her husband. He always has company.
Peter Mortimer, the family “action man”, has ensured a rotation of old teammates, friends and family make their way through the aged care home and visit his brother, while Matt has organised a spreadsheet that keeps track of who is visiting his dad and when.
Even with an ailing mind some things just don’t change.
“His natural instinct to want to help others, and assist them still shines through today even at this current stage in his journey,” Erin says. “You can see it evident in the home too every day. Wanting others to feel involved, and helping some of the residents to walk on occasion getting from A to B. Always looking out for others first which has always been his personality.”
For all the family, heartache is close to the surface. “He was getting to the point when he’s supposed to bloody retire and that golden age where he could enjoy travelling and his grandchildren … that has been robbed of my dad and that is the hardest thing …” Matt says.
Andrew says his parents – “two incredible people” have been “robbed of their golden years … or at least robbed of what could have been used to celebrate and enjoy their life”.
“It’ll never be the same, mum and dad’s relationship now,” Andrew says. “It’s still husband and wife, but it’s not. It’s carer and patient – that’s the reality of the situation.”
Peter Mortimer says people need to know what the family have gone through if only to help others. “Karen’s lost a husband and she’s gained a dependent child,” he says.
“She’s devastated going home to an empty house and all the invitations from the NSW Rugby League that come through for both Stephen and Karen – but she is living that life of widow right now and the stress is still attached … But I must say she is doing an amazing job.”
It makes him wonder about the experience of other rugby league families. “What Stephen is going through makes us aware what others before him must have gone through – like Bill Noonan, John Raper and their families. The question has to be asked: why didn’t we know about this?”
In the blood
Back at Belmore, Andrew now gently helps his dad around.
The extended family work as a team and there’s always a Mortimer watching out for “Pop”.
On this afternoon there are moments of confusion as Mortimer wonders where his wife is. He’s forgotten Karen is back working with her creative team for a matinee performance of Wicked and can’t make the game.
When his grandson’s team becomes premiers, Mortimer joyously joins in the victory song and pats the young players on their backs. This is a sport – despite what has happened – the Mortimers still adore and the community that comes with it.
“You can see how much this game means to us,” Andrew says.
“We play a gladiatorial game. It‘s the greatest game of all. It’s hard, it’s tough. We love it.”
Karen says she has decided to speak publicly on the issue of head knocks to pick up where her husband left off. In 2021 Mortimer had backed in the NRL’s clampdown on headhigh tackles and stated he believed his brain issues were linked to head knocks.
“Stephen wanted the game to be safer and I will continue to be his voice on this issue,” Karen says. “I don’t want this issue pushed under the carpet. I want the real research to be out the front. If we can get rid of the clutter and go to the right sources, you are going to help every single player.
“You have got to protect the players from themselves. This is what Stephen was saying, because every single one of them will say; ‘I’m fine. I can go back on the field’.
“They are not a commodity for the game … I think the NRL are on the right track but they’ve got to keep on going … 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.”
Karen is adamant the game that gave her family so much must survive and thrive. “We don‘t want to kill the game, we love the game,” Karen says.
“We are rugby league people; my brother, my son, my grandsons, my husband, my brother in laws play all played the game.
“Two of my grandsons, down the track, might play professionally and I want the game to be as safe as it can be for them.”
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