Coping with stuff he could not understand
The NRL great was intelligent, articulate and the life of the party, but in hindsight his family now realise that some telltale signs were there that all wasn’t well
exposure to repetitive head impacts.
“My feeling is he would have been symptomatic for some time and he was a smart guy, a remarkable man, with a lot of diverse interests, I suspect he would have been coping with stuff he didn’t understand for quite a while. He didn’t have m e n t a l h e a l t h p r o b - lems; he j u s t couldn’t control stuff that was going in his
on head.”
It’s only looking back that Amanda now can see some telltale signs of CTE appearing and pinpointed the year of 2018, when Paul was still coaching the North Queensland Cowboys, as the turning point.
That year, with pressure ramping up on Paul’s coaching, she saw unusual behaviour trends emerging in her once calm, focused and steady husband.
“I look back and I see he was doing these things that weren’t Paul,” Amanda says, in her first interview since her husband passed.
“By then he had at times difficulty controlling his emotions, impaired judgment, lowered tolerance and displayed impulsive behaviour.”
At the same time as Paul was unknowingly living with a degenerative brain disease he was immersed in a “brutal” NRL coaching environment. CTE aside, it’s an environment that Amanda believes the NRL must improve to better care for the welfare of not only the coaches but their families. “With or without CTE, coaches work in a very high-pressure environment that affects not only them but their families as well,” Amanda says.
“I would love to see more support for coaches and their families as a legacy for Paul who really cared for the wellbeing of those coaches.”
While dealing with the relentless work pressure, Paul’s emotional struggles became quite apparent to Amanda when his dear friend, Cronulla teammate Adam Maher, was diagnosed with motor neurone disease in 2018. Paul was often in tears about Maher’s diagnosis.
“Paul didn’t handle it at all,” Amanda says. “I saw through Adam’s deterioration, he became just so emotional and upset. He struggled to deal with what was happening to Adam.”
And at work, the man that calmly, steadily, methodically, “excitedly” took the Cowboys to the grand final in 2015 – which they won – had started to change.
“Early on, he just took all the pressure in his stride, he remained focused, when he had a goal in mind he was determinedly on that path to achieve that goal,” Amanda says. “But then he started to change.”
After making the grand final in 2017, without superstars Johnathan Thurston and Matt Scott, and losing to the Storm, Paul had really high
expectations expect ti for f 2018. 2018
He told Amanda he thought they could win that season. The Cowboys didn’t make the finals. Again, Amanda was starting to see her husband really wrestle with the weight of it all.
“He wasn’t handling the pressure as well as he had in the past but by now I think the CTE was starting to take hold,” she says. “Where in the past he handled the intensity of coaching with a certain calmness … I could see he slowly starting to emotionally deteriorate.”
Off the field, Paul’s light just started to dim a little.
The man that was always the biggest life of the party, ensuring everyone was having a good time, singing, dancing (“he’d bring everyone along for the ride”), well, he started to step back a little.
“As this took hold, it didn’t go all together, but he definitely wasn’t the fun, happygo-lucky Paul we knew, and like I said, I put that down to the environment he was working in,” she said.
At home the kids and Amanda were starting to, at times, “tip toe” around their dad. The usually calm, adventurous, lighthearted dad was starting to have “surprising” verbal outbursts around innocuous things like say, not sitting down for dinner together or just not listening to him with intent.
“At home at times he was highly strung, we had to tiptoe around him, there was a lot of, ‘Daddy’s working in a really highly stressful environment at the moment’,” Amanda says. “It was just hard.”
The 2019 season came and the Cowboys didn’t make the finals again. Then Paul was crushed when in February 2020 Maher lost his battle with MND. By winter 2020, life at the Cowboys for Paul was going badly.
Paul, who had been the architect of amazing success at the club, who took the club to two grand finals and oversaw that incredible 2015 victory in which Thurston clinched their first premiership with a field goal in golden point, was starting to lose favour.
Amanda remembers driving the kids to school and hearing a local radio station: “Call in and tell us if you think Paul Green should be sacked.”
She quickly flicked off the station. But still, the Greens had hope, he was an optimistic guy, the club would back him in. Paul was the guy who’d worked hard on and off the field establishing a strong playing roster for future, supporting the bid for a new stadium, he cared for the community, but as can be the nature of the game, it wasn’t enough.
On July 20, 2020, 10 games into the season, Paul was called off the training paddock, into the Cowboys front office, and told he was no longer needed. His sevenseason tenure, in which he claimed two Nine’s trophies, two grand final appearances, a premiership, a World Club Challenge, and coached three Dally M winners, was over.
Amanda recalls the shock of it all.
“Those days after losing his Cowboys job it was tough for all of us,” Amanda says.
Still Paul regathered himself. The man who read piles upon piles of self-improvement books, was again thinking differently, driving himself forward, trying to find a silver lining.
The life they built in Townsville was over, they moved down to Brisbane and he worked hard to help out Amanda at home.
Then Paul was given another opportunity to coach for Queensland in 2021. And he didn’t just coach Queensland – Paul, ever the innovator, a thinker, called up contacts in the Queensland government to bring State of Origin to Townsville. It was a masterstroke which he was later lauded for.
But a bad series loss saw his contract not renewed. “Everything that could go wrong in that series, did go wrong,” Amanda says.
Paul was disappointed after losing that Origin job but opportunities were coming his way. He found a purpose working with construction group BMD with their leaders and was in the throes of developing a wellbeing app for the company. That Paul found an opportunity outside of football did not surprise those closest to him. This is a man who was highly intelligent, who had a helicopter licence, and when he was younger was aiming to be a commercial pilot at one point. He is a man who played the violin so well that he was considered for Queensland’s Conservatory of Music. He had every right to dream big.
“There’s so many layers to Paul, and whatever he put his mind to, he had so much belief,” Amanda says. “That’s one thing I loved about him was that was in his mind there was nothing that couldn’t be achieved.”
Work aside, he also had a “beautiful” and vast network of friends from all walks of life that would cushion him through the highs and lows of life. He was constantly on the phone having a yarn to them. Every year he was off to a fishing trip or punters club trip. In a few months he was off to Italy to see his Harvard Business School mates.
Paul’s phone, which still sits on in the Green family kitchen, still pings constantly with Whatsapp group notifications of his Harvard Business School graduate, fishing, punters club mates as they make plans.
He was always the “larrikin” of the bunch who knew how to have fun and was always making sure everyone else was having fun too. “The retelling of stories of his mischievous playing days was something he loved to do,” Amanda says.
But 2022 wasn’t without sadness and the loss of his dear friend, fellow fisherman, Australian cricketer Andrew “Roy” Symonds devastated him. Symonds passed away in a car accident. Paul fell apart with grief at Symonds funeral.
Amanda emotionally carried him through the streams of tears and sadness. Symonds had two kids, who are great friends with the Green family, Paul was bereft the Symonds kids had lost their dad so suddenly.
“I would never want you and the kids to go through this,” Paul said to Amanda.
Again, another moment in the caring dad’s life which showed that he never wanted such harm or hurt to happen to his family.
At the dining room table, Amanda lists what they had in place, one plan that specifically included 10-year-old Jed and a boat. Paul had decided to upgrade from a tinnie to a legitimate boat, a 50-footer, that was due to be delivered this week, so the pair could fish off the Brisbane coastline.
This week, he and Amanda were to head off to Orpheus Island to celebrate their respective 50ths with a group of friends.
There’s been an enormous outpouring of love for Paul since his passing. There have been letters from old teachers and friends talking about how amazing he was. “Beautiful letters just letting me know how Paul impacted their lives and what an incredible person he was,” Amanda says.
People keep dropping by with food and friends keep calling Amanda. “Family was everything to Paul,” she says.
“And Paul was an amazing dad and role model to our kids. He enforced values he lived his life by which was integrity, honesty, responsibility and respect … but in saying all that he also knew how to have fun.
“If there’s a chance that Paul’s story could help the next family spot the warning signs, and maybe be better prepared, then it’s a story that needs to be shared.”
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