Collingwood champion Murray Weideman has become the fourth league VFL/AFL player to be posthumously diagnosed with a debilitating neurological disease linked to head trauma and concussions.
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 last two years. The Victorian Football League was the forerunner to the current Australian Football League.
Weideman’s family today revealed the findings of the Australian Sports Brain Bank’s report.
Weideman died in February earlier this year, a day after his 85th birthday. After noticing serious changes to Weideman’s personality in recent 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% behind this. You don’t really think about it because your life goes along pretty smoothly for a long time, but then it kicks in late.”
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The Weideman name is still a big part of today’s AFL.
Weideman’s grandson, Sam Weideman, currently plays for the Melbourne Demons. The 24-year-old was selected by the Demons with pick nine in the 2015 national draft.
Farmer, who played with Geelong, was the first Australian footballer diagnosed with CTE in February 2020.
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 his car was travelling at least 130 kilometres an hour at the time of impact.
Frawley, who played 230 matches for St Kilda from 1984-1995, 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.
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