Rugby league great Wally Lewis linked with chronic traumatic encephalopathy

Origin legend Wally Lewis in action for Queensland. Photo / Getty Images

Rugby league great Wally Lewis has revealed he has a neurodegenerative condition linked with dementia.

The 63-year-old has revealed in an interview with Australia’s 60 Minutes he’s been diagnosed with probable chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).

“For a lot of sports guys, I think most of us take on this belief that we’ve got to prove how tough we are … how rugged,” Lewis told 60 minutes.

“But we’ve got to take it on and admit that the problems are there.”

Lewis played in a lengthy career spanning from 1978 to 1992 including 34 tests for Australia and 38 State of Origin matches for Queensland. He’s regarded as one of the greats of the game, becoming the sixth member of The Immortals honour in 1999.

In the 60 minutes interview, Lewis revealed just how bad his short-term memory has become.

“In one of my first meetings with the doctor, when she asked to repeat simple things – I think she gave me five things, and it might have been something like bus, dog, truck, camera, chair. And she said, ‘Remember those.’ And went over them two or three times,” Lewis recalled.

“A minute later she said, ‘What are the things I asked you to remember?’ And I got two of them. And then sometime later, after that, she said, ‘Do you remember what they were?’ And I think I said ‘bus’.

“Pride’s a wonderful thing, but there wasn’t much of it around then.”

Lewis looked back on his league career with no regrets.

“Would I change a thing? No, I wouldn’t,” he said.

“I loved the game that I played. I felt privileged to have played it and to have been given that chance.”

A scan shows the damage to Wally Lewis' brain. Photo / 60 Minutes

Lewis is among a number of prominent NRL players to go public with their dementia battle.

Cult hero Mario Fenech’s family spoke out last year, seven years after he first received a dementia diagnosis.

“He does not remember the moment because the next moment is the new moment,” his wife Rebecca told Channel 7′s Spotlight on Sunday.

Mario spoke at the wedding but his son Joe said by the next day, his memory was gone.

“The really sad part of this story is that when my parents woke up in the morning, the day after the wedding, my dad turned to my mum and said, ‘Oh, I’m really excited for the wedding, when is it?’,” Joe said.