Amateur player Andrew Macpherson killed himself at the age of 33. Now his family want to educate about the effects of concussion in sport
ndrew Macpherson bent down and gave his niece, Charlie, a cuddle. He managed to manufacture a smile, but it was only for the six-year-old’s benefit. The night before this morning had been a bad one. His sister, Laura Clarke, had raced over to his place to pick him up and found him in a state she had seen before.
, Clarke told her two daughters that Macpherson had died after an accident. They thought it meant a car accident. “I struggled with it,” Clarke says. “Charlie is a really deep thinker. They had a particularly lovely bond – she adored him.” The autopsy found six CTE lesions and a large amount of a protein called tau – the marker for the progressive and fatal brain disease, which is associated with repeated traumatic brain injuries and manifests as behavioural changes, mental health issues, impulse control problems, memory loss and other cognitive impairment.
No one, though, was as fond of him as his mother. The running family joke was that Anne-Marie loved her two children 100%: Laura 5% and Andrew 95%. He called her “mummy” his entire life.Photograph: David Dare Parker “This was in the early 2000s so it definitely wasn’t like it is now where you’ve got to have the mandatory week off after. He definitely played the week after. I would’ve seen another four or five big ones in the next three or four years and there were another couple when we played in Melbourne together after the WAFL.”
“He ended up doing a business degree,” Clarke says, then laughs. “Or I ended up doing the business degree. His name was on it. Mum and dad paid for it. We say it was a family effort.”In the end he started a plumbing business with Clarke. He was especially close to his sister, meaning she was one of the first to notice signs of his decline. “Certainly in the last two years there was a massive change in his personality,” she says.
“We had enough reason given his manic behaviours. He was very fast-talking, on the ball, kind of almost like somebody who had taken too many drugs. Not aggressive, just in a very erratic, anxious state and being very secretive, covering his tracks. Paperwork was scattered everywhere. A tap was running water. On the wall was some blood. Or was it dirt? She couldn’t make out which.
“I just want education,” she says. “I want people to be aware of it, and if Andrew’s story helps someone then his death is a little bit less of a waste. It is uncomfortable and it is horrifying, but I think people need to know the truth about it. It’s not a nice story, but it is his story.
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