Reporter: Michael Usher
Producer: Phil Goyen
Everyone knows you've got to be tough to play footy. All those big hits and crunching tackles, they're an important part of the game and, let's be honest, a huge part of the entertainment, as well.
If you're out on the field, chances are you will get hurt.
We're only just now finding out how badly. New research claims that constant tackling can injure the brain for life.
And the damage starts with that very first knock in that very first game back as a kid.
Story contacts:
For more information on the ‘HIT System’ –
www.simbex.com
For more information on Tommy Raudonikis -
www.cattledog.net.au
Full transcript:
MICHAEL USHER: On a rainy Friday night, Nicole Doyle is watching her 11-year-old son, Aaron, play footy. He loves it, and she loves to cheer him on, but like thousands of mums across the country, she feels every hit, every tackle. You must get anxious, do you?
NICOLE DOYLE: Very anxious - I've got no nails and I distract myself, turn around and try not to watch the game. He's got it, he's down... he's up - he's good, he's up.
MICHAEL USHER: When you see him being hit, when you see that tackle, how are you feeling?
NICOLE DOYLE: For a few seconds I'm waiting and waiting, until he gets up. And then I'm alright.
MICHAEL USHER: What's your worst fear, what's the worst thing that can happen to your son out there?
NICOLE DOYLE: That he's going to get a brain injury.
MICHAEL USHER: And it's a fear that may be justified. Aaron is just one of a million Australians who strap on the boots and hit the field every weekend to play Aussie rules, rugby league, rugby union or soccer. But according to the latest international research, the cumulative effect of repeated knocks to the head can cause devastating brain damage.
MARGARET RUSSELL: You think about broken arms and broken legs, but I never ever dreamt of, it just never entered my head, brain injury - no-one ever talked about it.
MICHAEL USHER: Margaret Russell had the usual concerns when her son Michael wanted to play rugby league. But she never imagined the game they both loved could leave her son permanently brain damaged. How tough is it out there watching them playing it?
MARGARET RUSSELL: Really hard.
MICHAEL USHER: Michael was a champion junior player from the age of seven. At 21, he suffered a bad concussion in a rough tackle, but after tests, was soon back on the paddock. It was to be the last game he ever played.
MARGARET RUSSELL: He was running with a ball, just got a try has come back, had the ball again, set up a big guy and boom - big hit. It wasn't a tackle, just a big hit.
MICHAEL USHER: A hit big enough to cause a brain bleed. Suddenly, Margaret's strapping young son was so close to death, even his doctors offered no hope.
MARGARET RUSSELL: They said to come up and say goodbye to him, because he's going to die, plain and simple as that, It was just unbelievable because here's this young man laying there, not a mark on him, nothing you could see.
MICHAEL USHER: Somehow, Michael survived. But he's well aware of what he has lost. How would you describe what happened to your brain? MICHAEL RUSSELL: If I was a Mercedes-Benz up until the accident, I would now be classed as A bashed-up VW.
MICHAEL USHER: Here in America, half a world away, cases like Michael's attract some of the world's top researchers to begin measuring the real damage football does to the brain, and what they've discovered is groundbreaking and worrying, in fact, it has already started to change the way the game is played here and it will surprise any one of any age who is about to lace up the footy boots. So we can't be in denial about this?
DR ANN MCKEE: No. It would be great if we could, because we all love football, we all love sports, but we can't ethically ignore this anymore.
MICHAEL USHER: This is the actual brain of a former American football player. One of thousands Dr Ann McKee has examined in her ground-breaking research - and with each slice, she finds more damage. All caused by repeated blows to the head and being knocked unconscious during a game of footy. How bad is it, how bad does this disease become?
DR ANN MCKEE: If a person lives long enough, they become institutionalised with very severs dementia and it looks very similar to an Alzheimer's patient or some other dementing disease, so its very, very severe.
MICHAEL USHER: This is what we're talking about. It's a real human brain - believe me, just touching it is a surreal experience - but it gives you a very good understanding of just how delicate, how fragile, this thing is. It's like soft butter wrapped up in a thin coating, how when the head is knocked, the brain changes shape, it moves backwards and forwards really violently. The skull tissues are torn and there's concussion. It can all happen very quickly - and that easily. And Dr McKee has revealed even a single blow like that can begin a slow spread of degenerative damage across the brain. An insidious, undetectable condition, that only reveals itself in an autopsy.
DR ANN MCKEE: On the very left panel is the brain of a normal person. The middle panel is a 45-year-old football player who developed memory problems and some behavioural problems, and you can see just looking at the brain above, that's really looking with your naked eye and you can see just tremendous deposits of this brown pigment.
MICHAEL USHER: Bottom line, brown is bad?
DR ANN MCKEE: Brown is bad, right, and you can't imagine a brain with this much damage functioning in anything close to a normal way.
MICHAEL USHER: That brown cloud is the creeping killer - a protein called tau. We all have it, but head trauma can mutate the protein and cause it to attack the part of the brain that controls our behaviour.
MICHAEL USHER: It was changes in her husband Tom's behaviour that Lisa McHale first noticed. After retirement, the former American football star transformed from a loving family man to a depressed drug user.
LISA MCHALE: When I look back at a time frame, I can say that by 2005, I recall very vividly thinking to myself, "there's something very wrong with my husband."
MICHAEL USHER: How do you describe it?
LISA MCHALE: It's like a shell. he looks like Tom, and he sounds like Tom, but it isn't Tom. Like, he's not real, he's not really in there.
MICHAEL USHER: In 2008, completely off the rails, he died from an accidental overdose. Looking for answers, Lisa donated his brain to Dr McKee's research. And what they found was that years of heavy hits had scarred his brain and caused the violent shift in his behaviour.
LISA MCHALE: Probably the first thing that went through my mind was, "Oh my God, Tom - this is what it was. "This is why you were feeling the way you were feeling." And nobody had any idea. Nobody had any idea.
DR ANN MCKEE: Well, what we're seeing in football players is first of all, they're dying at a young age. The average death is around age 50, which is obviously far too young. They have a lot of behavioural problems which include irritability and assaultive behaviour, there have been drug and substance abusers in these football players, so their life tends to spiral downhill.
MICHAEL USHER: Back on Sydney's northern beaches, that's a scary prospect for mum Nicole and her 12-year-old son Aaron.
NICOLE DOYLE: The brain, it moves inside the skull, a couple of those - surely its not going to be good?
MICHAEL USHER: Why do you let him play then?
NICOLE DOYLE: Because he loves it, he's a boy. You've got to let them be, you've got to let them grow.
MICHAEL USHER: The research is a long way from being tested here, but former players like NRL legend Tommy Raudonikis believe our codes are vastly different to American grid iron.
TOMMY RAUDONIKIS: They should ban that that big thing they put on their head, that's what they wear in car races or when they go to the room. They're getting all the injuries, all these brain injuries, because they run like a dive bomber, their head first.
MICHAEL USHER: And here in suburban Brisbane, it's all about tackling safely and avoiding head contact.
TOMMY RAUDONIKIS: Throughout my career, not once did I know of or hear of anyone who had suffered brain damage or Alzheimer's or whatever. I'm not going around twittering like a bird.
MICHAEL USHER: You certainly haven't got Alzheimer's?
TOMMY RAUDONIKIS: Not at this stage, anyway.
MICHAEL USHER: But all codes are well aware of the dangers and have enforced strict safety standards when it comes to head injury. This may well be the next step.
MICHAEL USHER: Richard Greenwald is showing me the HIT System way to monitor each on-field crunch. The level of impact is recorded by sensors fitted to helmets and easily adapted to suit other sporting headgear.
RICHARD GREENWALD: So your car has many sensors that trigger the airbags, and this is basically the same sensor. It's basically detecting the motion of the head every time you decelerate or accelerate the head over a certain level we trigger the data collection and record the information and type of impact.
MICHAEL USHER: If the hit is too hard, they sit out - no argument. Are you going to scare kids off playing hard football, that they'll be reluctant to take and go as hard as they might have before?
RICHARD GREENWALD: We sure hope not. We hope exactly the opposite, that they can learn how to tackle properly and tackle effectively and efficiently whilst sparing themselves the potential for an injury.
MICHAEL USHER: I have an 8-year-old son, he's about to start playing contact rugby union, is that too young?
RICHARD GREENWALD: I think it is, I think it is. The dangers are just too great. We love our kids and we want to watch them play and we want to live vicariously through them, but we cannot be setting them up for injury as they grow older.
MICHAEL USHER: Lacrosse is the safer option for Lisa McHale and her boys. Football is off the agenda for now.
LISA MCHALE: You know, there are certain things in life that I think you should risk life and limb for, you know - your family, your country, but for a game? You know what I'm saying. It's a game. It's entertainment and I don't think that's worth a life.
MICHAEL USHER: But football is here to stay - we wouldn't want it any other way. What this new knowledge can do is make the game safer, prevent the kind sporting tragedies we've seen in the past. Have you got any advice for people playing the game today?
RICHARD GREENWALD: Listen to coach, listen to your mum and listen to your dad, and don't be a hero, because you never know what can happen to you.
