POLLY FARMER BRAIN SHOCK
GEELONG football great Graham ‘Polly’ Farmer has become the first Australian rules player to be diagnosed with chronic traumatic encephalopathy — the crippling neurological disorder caused by repeated head knocks.
The diagnosis of Stage III CTE was confirmed after tissue from his brain was analysed at Sydney’s Royal Prince Alfred Hospital late last year.
Medical experts believe the devastating condition is caused by repeated head or subconcussive knocks over many years.
Farmer died last year after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease.
A report released overnight in online medical journal Acta Neuropathologica Communications confirms his CTE diagnosis and sheds new light on the football legend’s suffering over two decades. Farmer is identified in the report only as case number 19H208 FARMER.
Associate Professor Michael Buckland, head of RPAH’s department of neuropathology and founding director of the Australian Sports Brain Bank, said Farmer’s case was the most severe CTE diagnosis he had seen.
“It was first slide under the microscope and wow, here it (CTE) is,” Prof Buckland said.
“In this case the CTE change was severe and Alzheimer’s disease was at an intermediate level.”
CTE can only be diagnosed after death.
Prof Buckland has previously diagnosed CTE in three former rugby league players, including Canterbury star and coach Steve Folkes and former Eastern Suburbs hooker Charles ‘Peter’ Moscatt, as well as a boxer.
Former rugby union player Barry ‘Tizza’ Taylor was diagnosed with CTE at the Brain Bank in Boston.
Farmer’s diagnosis takes the tally to six but Prof Buckland said there were “more in the pipeline”.
CTE symptoms include memory loss, confusion, impaired judgment, impulse control problems, depression, anxiety and often begin years or even decades after the last brain trauma.
Farmer’s children Kim, Dean and Brett made the difficult decision to allow their father’s brain to be tested in the hope it would shed some light on CTE and provide one final legacy.
“It’s the fifth quarter,” Kim said. “We all had an opportunity to say goodbye. Once he was gone we did have enough space to consider the enormity of it.
“We had to consider what (a
CTE finding) it would mean to any young person considering playing contact sport or any person who has played contact sport ... any person who is concerned they may have been impacted by concussion while playing.
“We just felt what could be gained outweighed any other considerations.”
The six-time premiership player in the WAFL and VFL died last August aged 84, with hundreds of sports stars, politicians, family and friends attending a state funeral at Perth Stadium.
He played close to 400 WAFL, VFL and state games over two decades but both Kim and Brett believe their father never missed a game with concussion.
The AFL and NRL now have strict rules surrounding concussed players, but it was a different game last century.
Brett said, while the major focus was on concussion he hoped his dad’s final legacy would be to put the spotlight on the harmful effects of repeated smaller or sub-concussive knocks.
“I have got memories of
Dad lying on the couch with a bucket and vomiting after games. And it didn’t happen just a few times. That is a sign nowadays that you have got concussion,” Brett said.
“His were undiagnosed concussions ... so as well as all the sub-concussive knocks.
“It happened a couple of times a season in Geelong, I know that.”
Brett hoped his dad’s latest diagnosis would provide the AFL and other contact sports with more information to take preventive measures.
CTE rose to prominence in 2005 when a paper was published in the US on the brain of former Pittsburgh Steelers centre Mike Webster, who died in 2002.
Webster was the first NFL player diagnosed with the disorder. In 2011, 4500 retired players brought a class action against the NFL.
The NFL has already paid out more than $US500 million under the sport’s concussion settlement, a figure tipped to reach the $US1 billion mark.
The news could have ramifications for the AFL and its treatment of concussion.