The sport their boy loved was damaging his brain. 'Now it's too late'

Nick (second from right) was picked for the state representative team Vic Country. (Supplied) Link copiedShareShare articleGrowing up, Nick Lowden always had a footy in hand. He relished the rough and tumble of a hard-fought game. Like many kids, he dreamt of making it big. His parents, Kerry and Tony, could see their boy was talented, a team player and that the AFL was within reach. What they couldn't see, what no-one could, was what the sport he loved was doing to his brain. The knocks, bumps, hits and collisions were adding up. "And now it's too late, he's gone," Kerry says. Nick Lowden died at 23. He is the youngest Aussie Rules player to be diagnosed with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). The degenerative brain disease, caused by repetitive hits to the head, has been found in former AFL star Danny Frawley, Richmond's Shane Tuck and AFLW premiership player Heather Anderson. But a growing number of young amateur and semi-professional players are now being diagnosed with CTE. The Lowdens are telling Nick's story so other parents and players know what they did not know. They say the AFL needs to take more responsibility in communicating the risks of playing the game. Energetic and athletic, boisterous and adventurous, by eight, Nick was playing for his local Aussie Rules club in Traralgon. The game came to him easily. He would go on to collect five junior best and fairest awards in a row. "I know he was my son, but he was a natural," Tony says. Despite his clear talent, Nick was selfless on the field, known for passing off the ball to help lesser skilled players get a touch or a goal. "We loved those years and he was just so happy playing and doing what he loved," Kerry says. "He'd be asking me, 'Do you think I'm good enough, Dad?' And, I said, 'Of course you are,'" Tony says, 'You're as good as any of the others.'" His parents would remind him that footy "wasn't everything". "There's other things that are great in life besides football, but he loved football and that's the path he wanted to go on," Kerry says. He made a state representative team, then was selected to an elite junior AFL team, Gippsland Power. "They're the gateway to the AFL and the kids are there to demonstrate their abilities," Kerry says. "And Nick's first year there was really good." But his parents say one moment in the fourth quarter of a 2017 game triggered an enormous change in their 17-year-old son. Nick, in his number 13 jersey, leapt for a mark. "It looks like he's had his legs taken out from underneath him," Tony says. "And then he's just come down, hit his head on the ground and you could tell he was out for a couple of seconds." Against the AFL's own junior footy concussion protocols, he was sent back out to play. Afterwards, Nick was showing signs of memory loss. He couldn't recall the words to the team song and repeatedly asked if they had won. Nick's mental health started to rapidly decline. "Over the next 12 months he started to deteriorate," Kerry says. He was sensitive to light, was quick to anger, would have mood changes, self-doubt, frustration, depression. "We would say to him, 'Nick, you've got everything going for you.'" There's no way of knowing, while a person is alive, if they're developing CTE. There's no test, no scan. It occurs when an abnormal protein builds up in the brain's nerve cells, causing them to malfunction and die. Neuropathologist Michael Buckland, who found CTE in Nick's brain after he died, says the damage may have started in his teen years. While Nick suffered only one known concussion, it's not only concussions that cause CTE. "What drives CTE risk is exposure to repeated head impacts," Dr Buckland says. "Most of those won't give you any signs or symptoms, they'll just be part of the rough and tumble of the game, but each of one of those is doing microscopic damage." Dr Buckland says an average person may get hit in the head a couple of dozen times in their life. But people who play a lot of contact sports are exposed to "thousands, if not tens of thousands of these impacts". Commonly reported CTE symptoms include problems with mood, memory and impulse control. Several Australian players who've been diagnosed have died by suicide. "We don't really have enough data to draw a sort of a causal link between the two, but … it's a disturbing association, which I think needs more investigation," Dr Buckland says. He believes the AFL, like all major contact sports, needs a CTE prevention protocol. "The way we're going prevent it is by reducing exposure, just like skin cancer and the summer sun, you reduce your risk by reducing exposure." Warning: The next section contains references to suicide. On the surface, life looked great for Nick. He'd carved out a strong semi-professional career, playing for the Casey Demons in the Victorian Football League then for Norwood in South Australia's league. He was at uni, had a loving girlfriend, an adoring family and sup

The sport their boy loved was damaging his brain. 'Now it's too late'

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