They’re all caught up in the game of their life.
Former WAFL players once rivals on the field now teaming up to support each other through Parkinson’s disease.
And they’re being backed by WA’s neurological research body, the Perron Institute.
Institute CEO Steve Arnott, himself a retired WAFL player and member of the 1971 West Perth premiership team, has come together with fellow former Cardinal Bryan Pleitner, who has the disease, to promote the growing group.
“We want to find out who in the WAFL has the condition, get a list together, a cohort,” Arnott said.
“We can help them with the Perron Institute coming in behind them and provide information and support as they go through the journey.
“They are guys that have played with each other but also against each other.
“They’re all coming together in the biggest game of their lives. And it’s about the team Parkinson’s, if you like, from WAFL. They are no longer adversaries, they are teammates coming together with this condition.”
Pleitner, a two-time premiership player and founding member of the Cardies Coffee Club for former West Perth players, remembers someone suggesting “we should see what other players around have Parkinson’s”.
He and Arnott acknowledged their current list of 14 included five players from West Perth, including high-marking Laurie Richards, three from Swan Districts, including man-mountain Ron Boucher, and former members of Perth and Subiaco.
“That’s without even fully diving into the numbers in these clubs,” Arnott said.
“You hope the statistics are different but I think the facts will tell us different as we move forward in our discovery of the players from that era that have Parkinson’s disease.”
Arnott and Pleitner were guests of the West Perth Football Club at a recent Falcons lunch at Joondalup along with Perron Institute medical director David Blacker, who also has the condition.
“Today’s about providing focus on Parkinson’s disease and the impact it is having on WAFL players of our era,” Arnott said.
“Parkinson’s is the fastest growing neurological condition other than dementia.
“It is really in pandemic proportions.”
Dr Blacker, a renowned stroke expert in WA, has turned his attention to Parkinson’s research and to helping the WAFL players.
“Parkinson’s is a movement disorder,” he said. “The primary thing is slowness of movement.
“When you’re walking and moving, it feels like you’re wading through honey sometimes.
“The second feature that 70 per cent of people have is a tremor in the arm or leg and it’s usually on one side.
“And the other thing people can have is a stiffness or rigidity of the muscles.”
Dr Blacker addressed the impact of football or contact sport on players getting Parkinson’s.
“It’s very interesting and we still have got a bit more to find out,” he said. “But I want to give a message of reassurance at the start.
“The literature is much weaker finding an association between traumatic brain injury and Parkinson’s than it is for chronic traumatic encephalopathy (which afflicted football legend Graham Farmer).
“Sometimes in medicine things aren’t as they seem. And the first thing we think of with football ... ‘head trauma, is that a risk?’.
“But there may well be other factors. Interestingly you have a look at Muhammad Ali for example. Everyone assumes he had Parkinson’s-related head trauma. Well, it turns out that his relatives allowed for his medical records to be publicised about a year ago.
“And a detailed analysis has shown that he had regular early onset Parkinson’s disease. His brain scans didn’t have any trauma.
“One of things I want to start with reassuring is that the benefits of exercise in terms of reducing the risk of Parkinson’s is definitely well proven.
“The last thing I would want is the media to grab some idea that ‘oh my gosh, all these WAFL players have got Parkinson’s’ and detract from young blokes taking up the game and all the benefits that the fitness and things accrue.
“So it’s a message of reassurance to begin with and … once we get over the age of 60, probably about one per cent (of Australians get diagnosed with the disease) — that’s a huge chunk of people.
“One of the key things behind the increase in rates does appear to be exposure to environmental toxins. Particularly including herbicides and pesticides, the things we spray on the oval to keep the weeds off. And we’ve all done years and years of training and practice, and that may well be one of the factors behind it.”
Arnott expected the cohort of 14 ex-players with Parkinson’s to double as they look for more players with the condition.
“And that’s well above the mean of people with Parkinson’s disease,” he said.
“At the Perron Institute we’ve got three or four researchers in the space that are working very hard to find cures and treatment.
“We run 21 clinics a week, three of which are Parkinson’s. So we treat a lot of people in that space.
“I just recently returned from London where I met Cure Parkinson’s UK, an amazing group that spends probably half a billion dollars with their collaborative arrangements around the world looking for solutions for Parkinson’s.
“And we hope to get a trial in Perth. And if we have a cohort of people that we can proffer up to that trial, it’s going to be an excellent outcome.”
Pleitner thanked former Royal and Falcon George Michalczyk for trying to find former players affected by Parkinson’s.
And he thanked Swan Districts legend Bill Walker for allowing the group to use the family’s Odin Tavern as its headquarters.
Arnott said it was not a sombre day as the group of former WAFL players were confronting their issues and to be congratulated.
“We congratulate them on coming out and saying ‘hey, I’ve got this condition but I want to be part of the cure and treatment and I want to know as much as I can about it’,” he said.