‘Was it worth it?': AFL legend's heartbreaking health reveal, Dermott Brereton

Mercury

07-06-2025

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Dermott Brereton has revealed the shocking toll his footy career has had on his body.
Arguably one of the hardest men to ever play the game, the five-time premiership star says he is left in crippling pain almost daily.
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The 60-year-old, who played 211 games in the AFL, detailed what he endures after putting his body on the line during the league's toughest period.
'Some mornings my beautiful partner Julie has to put on my shoes and socks for me,' Brereton said while speaking at the Norm Smith Oration at the MCG on Thursday.
'With the pain in my spine, where they put in a cage inserted there, I can't reach. I just can't put on socks and shoes.
'Some days I have to walk down the stairs sideways because I haven't had any cartilage — bone on bone, that is — for 40 years.
'Some days I can't shake hands with other men, and if they do so, I fear they'll re-open some of the broken bones in my hands from defenders' spoils and from when (a rival player) jumped on my hand deliberately.
'Some days I have to crab my way down the stairs because my often half-a-dozen times reconstructed ankle will not flex any more.'
Brereton helped from field in the 1989 Grand Final after being struck by opponent Mark Yeates.
Brereton and his teammates celebrate winning the 1988 Grand Final.
Brereton says the gruelling daily battles have taken a toll on his mental wellbeing. Despite it all he wouldn't change a thing from his career.
'Some days I double up from rancid heartburn from the endless dosages of (painkillers and anti-inflammatories),' he said.
'Some nights I sleep very little because of the arthritis in my shoulder joints. That's from decades of lifting as heavy weights as I could, purely because the position I played required it.
'Some mornings, I pathetically allow myself to become melancholy and even teary over the degeneration and the physical toll that football has taken on my body.
'I often ask myself, in that moment of true misery, when I can't move, that moment of weakness, I'll ask myself, 'Was it worth it?'.
'And the answer's always the same. I'd do it all over again, exactly the same again.
'Maybe next time, though in the next lifetime, I might go a little harder.'
Brereton was a key player for the Hawks during their blistering run in the 80s and early 90s when they won five out of nine premierships.
Across that same span they appeared in eight Grand Finals, losing twice to Essendon and once to Carlton.
During the 1989 Grand Final against Geelong, the Hawthorn centre half forward was taken out in the opening moments of play in a targeted hit that left him with two broken ribs and a ruptured kidney.
Famously it wasn't enough to keep him out of the contest as he helped the Hawks win their second straight flag.
Brereton ultimately departed the Hawks at the end of the 1993 season and joined the Sydney Swans in 1994 before his illustrious AFL career came to an end in 1995 as a member of Collingwood.
He was inducted into the Australian Football Hall of Fame in 1999. More commonly known as Dermie, the Hawthorn icon has become a much loved commentator.
Originally published as 'Was it worth it?': AFL legend's heartbreaking health reveal