I know this will be anathema to all
red-blooded Aussie males.
Patient zero: the Wallaby who couldn’t live with the
noise leaves a ‘quiet legacy’
Dan
Vickerman’s mind had become a war zone and he didn’t know why. A once measured,
‘gentle giant’, there were now times when he’d lose it over the smallest of
things. His mother reveals why she believes rugby may have cost him his life.
Jessica
Halloran
11 April,
2025
In the middle
of the night, when “demons” were raging in Dan Vickerman’s head, he’d call his
grandmother, Erna, and her sage words would calm his mind.
Severe
insomnia plagued the former Wallaby, but the conversations with his
grandmother, who lived in Cape Town, would help fight off the dark thoughts.
In the final
years of his life, Dan’s mind had become a war zone and he didn’t know why. A once measured, “gentle
giant”, there were now times when he’d lose it over the smallest of things. His
mother, Val, remembers his moods swinging between incredible anxiety to utter
depression.
A few months
before he took his life, on the morning of February 18, 2017, Dan bluntly told
a friend: “My head is f..ked.” He left behind a wife, Sarah, and two beautiful
boys. On that summer morning, Val received a phone call telling her that her
only child had died. He was 37.
In the dark,
numb days that followed, nothing made sense and in the midst of grief, Val, a pragmatic,
stoic woman, went searching for answers. When someone dies by suicide there are
so many unanswered questions for those left behind, starting with: “Why didn’t
I ...?”
“There is
also an incredible amount of guilt. So you go looking for answers,” she says.
While
researching suicide in sport and personality changes, Val came across chronic
traumatic encephalopathy. She had never heard of it. CTE is a brain disease
linked to repetitive head knocks. The more Val learnt by reading research
papers from Boston University’s CTE Centre and Brain Bank, the more it became
clear that her son, who had a three-decade rugby career that included 63
Wallabies Tests, had been suffering from the condition. As Val says, “his
brain was sick”.
Wallabies
great Dan Vickerman achieved so much on the rugby field, but off it, he faced a
silent battle with CTE. After his death, his family set out to understand the
disease and fight for change. Through their efforts and the creation of the Dan
Vickerman…
At Val and
husband Les’s home in Bowral, NSW, she sits in a plush armchair in their formal
living room, pulls out a sheet of paper and starts reeling off CTE symptoms
that related to her son.
“He had mood
and behavioural changes in his later years; he had exaggerated responses to
day-to-day stresses; anger and agitation due to inconsequential happenings;
mood fluctuations; depression; anxiety; generalised body aches and pain; and
severe insomnia,” she says.
Val believes
Dan knew things “weren’t right”. “He went to a psychologist, he went to
[another] psychiatrist, and not one of them said it could be CTE,” she says.
“It was not really out there back then.” It was a time when there was little
understanding of the disease, which has since been found, post-mortem, in the
brain tissue of several leading Australian footballers, including St Kilda’s
Danny Frawley and rugby league player and coach Paul Green. Both took their own
lives.
But what sets
apart Dan Vickerman – a domineering lock whose international career ran from
2002 to 2011 and who had three seasons with the Brumbies and five with the
Waratahs – is that he was patient zero for the Australian Sports Brain Bank.
Michael
Buckland, the chief neuropathologist of the Australian Sports Brain Bank, says
Dan’s death led to its formation. It is a joint initiative by the neuropathology
department at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Sydney and the Brain and Mind
Centre at the University of Sydney.
“I was very
aware of Dan’s death, he used to play for Sydney Uni, so his passing was very
local to us as well,” Dr Buckland says. “The fact his brain was unable to be
examined was really the driving force, the motivation for setting up the
Australian Sports Brain Bank. We wanted a pathway for families to have their
loved ones examined, if they so wanted.
“After we
launched the brain bank in March 2018, Val and Les Vickerman were in contact immediately.”
Not long
after the Australian Sports Brain Bank opened, Val and Les travelled up to
Sydney and met with Dr Buckland, with that interaction confirming their
thoughts on Dan’s condition.
Soon after
Dan’s death, the Rotary Club of Bowral/Mittagong suggested establishing the
Dan Vickerman Scholarship for PhD students in conjunction with Australian
Rotary Health.
The criteria
for the scholarship was specific to CTE research and it was to be undertaken
at the University of Sydney. Covid intervened and it was only this year that
the scholarship has been awarded. Young scientist Joanna New is the first
scholarship recipient. “Being awarded the Dan Vickerman Scholarship is a great
honour to me, it holds to his legacy, his story and it allows him to be an example
within not only the research community but the sports community,” Ms New says.
“My work is
really about trying to address some of the unanswered questions in the CTE
space. Practically what we hope to develop with this research is to help find
a test that can be used in a medical or sporting setting.”
Val has said
Dan may have “had a chance” if he had known what was happening inside his head,
and life may have played out differently.
“Hopefully
with the research we will one day be able to diagnose CTE in life,” Val says.
“If people
are able to get a definitive diagnosis, even if there is no cure for it now,
they will at least feel ‘I am not going mad’.
“There is a
reason for it. I think it will make it easier for the family. They will
have an understanding of what is happening. I think for the children of people
that take their own lives, who may ask, ‘Why did my dad leave me? Why did
my mum leave me? Did they not love me enough?’ I think if there’s an answer
for the children, it may make things easier.”
Career on
the rise
As a child,
Dan loved the “crash and bash” of rugby union. He adored the contact and, being
tall, he soon found himself playing in the second row.
He played for
the prestigious Bishops Diocesan College in Cape Town, which has produced many
great Springbok players, and he proudly wore the jumper.
“For some
unknown reason, the Bishops rugby jumpers were white. The school was located at
the lee of Table Mountain, where it rained all winter,” Val says, laughing.
“Dan and the jumper would always come home absolutely covered in mud. He loved
sports. He aspired to be in the school’s firsts rugby team, which he did.”
While mild
mannered off it, on the field Dan was brutally competitive and he had big
dreams. In a private moment, a teenage Dan told his father: “I want to be the
best lock in the world.” With a link to Australia via Les’s father Leslie, he
travelled to Brisbane in 1999.
“After school
he played for the Queensland University, then after that he went back to
South Africa and played for the South Africa U21 Baby Bok team,” Val says.
While
initially he had hoped to become a Springbok, his journey back to Australia in
2000 would make him a Wallaby.
While
attending Varsity College and the University of South Africa, Dan was lured to
the Harbour City in that Olympic year to attend the University of Sydney. He
was then contracted by the Brumbies Super Rugby franchise. His selection for
Australia “A” sealed his future allegiance and he soon made his Test debut
against France in Sydney.
Dan would end
up playing in three World Cup campaigns before his retirement from the game in
2012.
“He was very
uncompromising in battle,” his Tahs and Wallaby teammate – and now Rugby Australia
chief executive – Phil Waugh said.
After playing
at the World Cup in 2007, he withdrew from the Australian rugby scene and headed
to England for three years. At Cambridge University he earned a masters in land
economics and, in another sparkling moment in his rugby career, Dan captained
Cambridge to a 31-27 victory over fierce rivals Oxford in 2009.
It was, by
any measure, a glorious career. “He loved the game,” Val says.
Vickerman
captained Cambridge to a 31-27 victory over fierce rivals Oxford in 2009.
Suicide
links
To Val’s
knowledge, Dan was never knocked out or diagnosed with concussion while playing
rugby union.
Research by
Boston University’s CTE Centre and Brain Bank shows CTE is caused by
repetitive brain trauma. That trauma includes both concussions that cause
symptoms and non-concussive hits to the head that do not cause symptoms.
Boston
University says the number or type of hits to the head needed to trigger
degenerative changes in the brain is unknown.
But what is
known is that suicidality has been clinically found to be associated with CTE,
Dr Buckland says.
“There’s a
very strong and disturbing association between CTE and suicidal behaviour, including
suicidal ideation and completed suicides,” he says.
“We are
finding that in our cohort – and the Boston University group have also
reported that in their cohort – the majority of people with CTE, they
either self-report or their family members report suicidal ideation or suicide
attempts. Suicide is certainly over-represented in the CTE cases compared to
those cases without CTE.
“About just
under half our cases, our donors with CTE, ended with us because they
suicided.”
Just two
years after Dan’s death, Australian rules footballer Danny Frawley was found to
have had CTE after he deliberately crashed his car into a tree in country
Victoria.
In 2020,
Richmond player Shane Tuck endured a “war zone in his head” before he took his
life at 38. He had CTE.
In August
2022, former Cronulla player and Cowboys coach Paul Green, 49, who’d
celebrated his son’s 10th birthday the previous day and was tossing up several
job offers, took his own life. He was found to have had stage-three CTE. In
November 2022, AFLW player Heather Anderson committed suicide. She was 28.
Anderson, played rugby league and then Australian rules, from the age
of five. She too was found to have had CTE.
Dan was part
of the Wallabies team who were runners-up in the 2003 World Cup final against England.
The mind battles of those English rugby champions have been well documented.
Last year
England World Cup player Steve Thompson said he often couldn’t remember the
names of his children and had no memories of the 2003 victory. “I can’t
even remember being in Australia,” he has said. Thompson, 46, has also said his
shock early-onset dementia diagnosis left him feeling suicidal.
So many
questions
Val is an
advocate for suicide prevention awareness and continues to run a suicide
support group in Bowral in an effort to help those, like her, who have
lost a loved one.
A common
conversation can be around the “sliding doors” moments. For her, it involves
her mother, Erna, who passed away two months before Dan took his life. Val
wonders if her mother had been there for another desperate phone call, maybe
she could have helped him with his tormented thoughts that night.
“There are
many should have, could have, what ifs, you ask yourself when someone
suicides,” Val says. “And I wonder if my mother had been alive…”
Dan’s hulking
frame still looms beautifully large in his parents’ home. He’s there, grinning
gently in his Wallabies jersey, walking off the field, forehead bleeding.
A local painter, Dave Thomas, has captured this warm, joyous moment,
which the Vickermans proudly have hanging on their wall.
“We hope to
donate the painting to Sydney University Rugby Club,” Val says. It’s another
institution where Dan left a strong legacy, playing 49 games, including three
grand finals.
But it’s the
memories off the field that shine through the most on this visit to Bowral. Les
and Val show a 2016 photobook, capturing an extended family holiday adventure
to Cape Town.
Everyone is
smiling as they stand in the front of the house where Dan was raised. There are
pictures on the beach where he swam and played as a child.
They are all
carefree, windswept, happy – it was just months before Dan died. The photos
show no hint of what he was battling.
‘Real’
ambition
After Dan
passed away there were newspaper and TV reports about athletes suffering
post-retirement – insinuating that the former Wallaby was troubled by no longer
playing the game – but Val makes it clear, her son’s mental anguish wasn’t
related to his sporting career coming to an end.
“No, that’s
not true,” she says. “Dan actually had prepared for a career after rugby.”
He had worked
for KPMG, then in property and just weeks before he died he had announced that
he had set up a property investment fund. His career trajectory was on the up.
But for those
close to him, it was clear Dan also had other priorities.
Les recalls
turning to his son, after Dan had not long retired from rugby, and asking what
his “real” ambition in life was now. “To be the best father in the world,” Dan
said.
Val wants the
world to remember her son as a “gentle giant”.
“He was an
unassuming person that didn’t want the limelight, didn’t court the media … and
now he is leaving a quiet legacy,” she says.
If you or
someone you know may be at risk of suicide, call Lifeline (13 11 14) or the
Suicide Call Back Service (1300 659 467), or see a doctor
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/sport/patient-zero-the-wallaby-who-couldnt-live-with-the-noise-leaves-a-quiet-legacy/news-story/251e9c796e3ce2398e3a6b7bc5c70602
To me the loss of even one young man
to this disease is anathema – but I know many will disagree. At the very least
we need protocols to track and support those who are at risk and to intervene
early if things are “going of the rails:”
We also need to know research and
warning signs are properly followed up to ensure those at risk are saved.
Dying for the sake of any game is
just plain silly IMVHO. Grumps > /dev/null.
David.
