Al-anwar Newspaper English news in Australia
He is famously known as Mr Perpetual Motion, but no man was supposed to move like this.
Ray Price stares blankly into the dark of night. It’s around 3am.
Wearing pyjamas, he is walking aimlessly, painfully, disturbingly, along a stretch of road, blood pouring from his bare feet ripped apart by a 10km soul-destroying stroll he cannot remember. Suddenly, the headlights of a passing car jolt Price into reality.
The motorist instantly recognises the rugby league legend in a place he shouldn’t be and pulls over.
“Where am I?” a confused Price asks the stranger, who replies: “I know who you are … and I’m getting you help”.
It’s the triple-0 phone call that will forever remain a signpost in the life of rugby league’s gutsiest gladiator.
Price — Parramatta’s last premiership-winning captain — has revealed he has been diagnosed with dementia.
Price is the latest rugby league legend to detail his battle with the condition, joining his former Canterbury rival Steve Mortimer and Souths great Mario Fenech, who went public a fortnight ago with his heartbreaking struggle with early onset dementia.
It has been 36 years since Price captained the Eels to premiership glory with a 4-2 defeat of Canterbury in the 1986 grand final. It was his 258th and final game for Parramatta before the retiring warhorse was chaired off into the sunset.
Now, as his beloved Eels look to break the NRL’s longest-standing title drought on Sunday night, Price is waging a crippling battle with an enemy he cannot see … invading his own mind.
“My brain is still there but I have been diagnosed with dementia,” said Price, who turned 69 in March. “I actually have the same neurologist (Rowena Mobbs) that Mario has got. I’ve been seeing her a bit longer than Mario.
“I watched the interview with Mario and it was really hard.
“It was heartbreaking to watch. I felt really bad for Mario and there could be a lot of players from our era who are going to be in the same position.
“’Turvey’ (Mortimer) has the same problems with dementia, too.
“It’s unfair, but that’s the price we paid for that era of football.
“When they first told me (about his diagnosis), I couldn’t believe it. But I refuse to let it get me down. I can be pig-headed, as people know, and I try not to believe a lot of things.
“I’m feeling OK now, but my condition will get worse and I just have to keep fighting.
“I just don’t want to lay down and die. I have 13 grandkids. What’s the point of rolling over and dying?” Dementia is a general term for loss of memory, language, problem-solving and other thinking abilities that are severe enough to interfere with daily life. Price, Mortimer and Fenech represent a triumvirate of tragic tales that have shone a forensic torch on the effects of concussions in rugby league, and why Australian Rugby League Commission boss Peter V’landys is ruthless in his desire to stamp out head-trauma incidents. Over the past 18 months, V’landys has spearheaded a move to eliminate high tackles in the NRL in a bid to combat the incidence of concussions, a strategic direction Price himself applauds.
