One tackle changed Ethan Lowe’s life. Now he’s suing for $1m

Lowe, 33, lodged the claim almost three years ago and feels he has no other option but to take up the fight against Lloyd’s Of London, which underwrites all NRL players who step onto the field for a competition which generates $400 million per year in television money.

“It’s got to here [Federal Court] and I haven’t had the mental bandwidth to do much else,” Lowe tells this masthead. “All my focus has been on this. I’m quite isolated at the moment dealing with the insurance claim.

“It took a while, but it dawned on me when we were going through this and we had to start fighting for it, this is about me, but it’s also bigger than me.”

The case is the most significant of its kind taken out against the company which insures the NRL and will be centred on Lowe’s condition after a “crusher” tackle in which accidental pressure was placed on his head and neck. Lowe knows the tackle wasn’t intentional, but it’s had a severe impact on his life.

In an affidavit lodged with the Federal Court and seen by this masthead, Lowe says he’s been left with “permanent hemiplegia”, a condition which means there’s no improvement over time. Lowe’s symptoms are unlikely to get worse, but they won’t get better.

He was told he would be denied access to the policy in April last year because the insurer said he did not satisfy the definition of complete paralysis.

But his everyday life has been a struggle ever since the tackle, which resulted in him having urgent spinal surgery three days after his last game.

Lowe tells countless stories of not being able to function properly with the condition, which was diagnosed as a protrusion on the C5/6 discs on the left side of his spinal cord (Lowe is left-side dominant), or Brown-Sequard syndrome, damage to one half of the spinal cord.

The condition has caused numerous and continuing problems with his body: leaving his left hand in a “claw” like shape, hand and arm numbness, tingling in his fingers, left leg weakness, poor balance and limb spasms which can see him stumble and fall over.

“I can put my hand on a pan that’s hot and not even notice,” Lowe says. “Hitting buttons is hard. Tying my shoes is time-consuming. My handwriting wasn’t the best to start with, now I can’t even read it. I went to grab a can of Coke from the servo, I walked to pay for it and it slipped straight out of my hand because I wasn’t concentrating. My hand just went.

“My balance on my left side is going. If I walk the dog and he wants to pull me to go to the toilet, I just lose balance.

“I’ve had to deal with it for four years and it’s part of my everyday life now. But everything I have to do, I need to fully concentrate. It’s draining mentally.”

The court is expected to hear a history of Lowe’s rugby league injuries, which included a surgery in 2016 for a protrusion on his spinal cord after a tackle in an NRL finals game while playing for the Cowboys. Lowe says he recovered without further symptoms after that operation.

But after moving to the Rabbitohs for the 2019 season, his career was cut short at 143 NRL games following the injury against the Knights, in which he felt his head “snap backwards” under the weight of rival Herman Ese’ese, commonly known in rugby league as a “crusher” tackle. He was 29 at the time.

A month after the Lowe tackle, the NRL announced a crackdown on “crusher” tackles for putting pressure on the head or neck, with harsher sanctions for players found guilty of the offence.

Lowe’s case - headed by counsel Callan O’Neill - will call Dr Rowena Mobbs, one of the best neurologists in the country who has been at the forefront of the concussion crisis, treating rugby league legends such as Wally Lewis and Mario Fenech.

Dr Mobbs has tabled a report which describes Lowe’s injuries as “permanent and his prognosis poor”, and she said the severity of Lowe’s condition was “made worse by the vulnerability” of his 2016 injury, not the cause of it.

Lloyd’s Of London will rely on a report from Dr Terry Coyne, who says “it is likely that the [2016 injury] resulted in a predisposition to a further injury in the event of significant force to the cervical
spine. As such both incidents have likely together resulted in Mr Lowe’s current condition”.

Regardless of the case, it’s a far cry from when Lowe was alongside Johnathan Thurston for the North Queensland Cowboys’ fairytale 2015 premiership and then made his State of Origin debut four years later in the deciding game of the 2019 series, kicking four crucial goals.

The Rabbitohs offered a job to Lowe in Queensland during 2021, the final year of his contract in which he was supposed to be paid $300,000 before retiring, and he’s now employed as a customer experience executive at Tabcorp.

“There are certain things because of my injury, I’ll never have a chance to do those as a career,” Lowe says. “I’ve had to come to terms with that basically from the start.

“I couldn’t go and work for my old man as a tradie. Any physical job is out of the question. Sitting for long periods of time, it can get really tough. The RLPA [Rugby League Players’ Association] has stood solid the whole way through. They’ve been outstanding. My wife and family have been great. That’s about as wide as my circle is at the moment.

“And this is just the first step - not just for me - but for other athletes, and those outside the NRL. It’s dawned on me that this is bigger than just me.

“It feels like there’s more on the line now.”

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