A post-mortem following the death of Paul Green has revealed the former NRL player and coach suffered from one of most “severe forms” of pure Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) a neuropathologist professor had ever seen.
It comes as Amanda Green vowed to “shine a light” on her late husband’s diagnosis, as well as raise awareness around the need for greater support for coaches and their families.
The rugby league world was left shocked in August when it emerged Green had been found dead, aged 49, in his Brisbane home.
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Speaking expansively to The Australian, Amanda Green said her husband the night before his passing was weighing up a full-time “corporate” career or taking a Dolphins assistant coaching role under the legendary Wayne Bennett.
Ms Green said the next morning she saw her sleepy partner in bed – “I’m going to do a quick class, I’ll see you when I get home, get yourself going,” she said to him – before driving to a pilates class.
When she returned, Green was dead.
“I came home and found him … that was it,” Ms Green told The Australian. “There were no signs.
“We often talked about our future and what that looked like. I never once doubted that we would spend the rest of our lives together.”
Green had a decorated playing career, playing 162 games for the Cronulla Sharks, North Queensland Cowboys, Sydney Roosters, Parramatta Eels and Brisbane Broncos. He then made the switch to coaching after he hung up the boots, taking the Cowboys to their first-ever premiership in 2015 before also taking over the Queensland Maroons Origin side.
Ms Green said her late husband “wasn’t depressed, showed no signs of mental health issues, his family was everything to him”.
Shortly after the former player and coach’s death, Michael Buckland from the Australian Sports Brain Bank rang Amanda and sensitively asked if the family would be happy to donate Paul’s brain for research – to which Amanda said yes.
After examining Paul’s brain, Professor Buckland told Ms Green last week he’d discovered one of the more “severe forms of pure” CTE — a crippling neurological disorder linked to concussions and subconcussive hits – he’d ever seen.
Of the sudden passing, Professor Buckland said Green had “an organic brain disease which robbed him of his decision-making and impulse control”. He added Green would likely have been “symptomatic for some time”.
“It was not him, it was the brain disease,” he told The Australian.
“The only known cause for the organic brain disease is exposure to repetitive head impacts.
“I suspect he would have been coping with stuff he didn’t understand for quite a while. He didn’t have mental health problems; he just couldn’t control stuff that was going on in his head.”
The diagnosis has given Ms Green, as well as her children Emerson (13 years old) and Jed (10), some “peace” and “relief”.
“I was able to sit Jed down and explain: ‘Daddy’s brain was sick, that’s why he did what he did’. The diagnosis has helped them understand what happened,” she says. “For my daughter Emerson it has also given her a sense of relief because of what’s being said out there (that Green had depression). She now understands that he wasn’t in that space and there’s nothing we could have done, because he was sick. We just didn’t know it.
“This diagnosis has helped us understand and rationalise what has happened. It has given myself, the kids, some peace.”
A groundbreaking study in 2018 discovered CTE in two former Australian rugby league players. Mario Fenech and James Graham have also opened up recently about the struggles they’ve had endured likely as a result of CTE.
At least four former AFL players have been posthumously diagnosed with CTE – Graham ‘Polly’ Farmer, Danny Frawley, Shane Tuck and Murray Weideman – while former Melbourne forward Shaun Smith recently said he was convinced he was living with the condition.
Amanda said she applauded the steps the NRL had taken around concussion protection, adding she wanted to add her voice to continue to raise awareness.
“My goal is to shine a light on Paul’s diagnosis, so we can ¬advance our approach to detection, education, treatment and support for people suffering from CTE,” she said.
“I applaud the NRL for the improvements they are making to the game in regards to concussion and protecting players from grassroots to the professional level.
Ms Green said she “would love to see more support for coaches and their families, as a legacy for Paul, who really cared for the wellbeing of those coaches in the game”.
