A former captain of a championship-winning Australian rules football team yesterday became the fourth league player to be posthumously diagnosed with a debilitating neurological disease linked to head trauma and concussions.
Murray Weideman, who led the Collingwood Magpies to a grand final win over Melbourne in 1958 in the Victorian Football League, joins Danny Frawley, Graham Farmer and Shane Tuck in having chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) detected and diagnosed in the past two years.
The Victorian Football League was the forerunner to the Australian Football League.
Weideman’s family yesterday revealed the findings of the Australian Sports Brain Bank’s report.
Weideman died in February, a day after his 85th birthday. After noticing serious changes to Weideman’s personality in the past few years, his family spoke with him about donating his brain.
“I said: ‘Dad, we have got to do this, we have got to help,’” his son Mark Weideman told News Corp media. “The more science can build up and get evidence, the better things will become in the future.”
“He was 100 percent behind this,” he added. “You don’t really think about it because your life goes along pretty smoothly for a long time, but then it kicks in late.”
Farmer, who played with the Geelong Cats, was the first Aussie rules footballer diagnosed with CTE in February last year.
Former Richmond midfielder Tuck was assessed as having the “worst-seen case” of CTE when results were revealed by the brain bank in January.
Frawley died in 2019 at the age of 56.
The Victorian Coroners Court said in a report that Frawley was battling depression when he crashed his car into a tree outside Melbourne.
Police estimated that the vehicle was traveling at least 130kph at the time of impact.
Frawley, who played 230 matches for the St Kilda Saints from 1984 to 1995, had spoken publicly about his mental health battles.
No alcohol or illicit drugs were found in his system on the day of his death and he was posthumously diagnosed with CTE.
Frawley’s wife Anita said he was “never the same” even after treatment for depression.
“To his family, Mr Frawley would lie in bed all week and be extremely needy, but he would be able to put on a brave ‘public face’ and give the appearance of normal functioning,” the report said.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
Rafael Nadal on Wednesday said the upcoming French Open would be the moment to “give everything and die” on the court after his comeback from injury in Barcelona was curtailed by Alex de Minaur. The 22-time Grand Slam title winner, back playing this week after three months on the sidelines, battled well, but eventually crumbled 7-5, 6-1 against the world No. 11 from Australia in the second round. Nadal, 37, who missed virtually all of last season, is hoping to compete at the French Open next month where he is the record 14-time champion. The Spaniard said the clash with De Minaur was
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but