Unfiltered: Neale Daniher shares rare insight into lowest point of his AFL career

7NEWS

2 days ago

AFL icon and Australian of the Year Neale Daniher has shared rare insight into the lowest point of his career and the personal news that got him 'out of his funk'.
Daniher is this week's guest on a special episode of Unfiltered with Hamish McLachlan.
The interview was conducted over several weeks with McLachlan and Daniher exchanging text messages and Daniher would answer using his eye-gaze machine, which makes his voice sound like it used to.
Daniher has been battling motor neurone disease since 2013, but has never lost his infectious enthusiasm and determination.
The 64-year-old was crowned the 2025 Australian of the Year in recognition of his fundraising for the incurable disease.
Much has been said about Daniher's incredible fight against the disease, but not much is spoken about his career on the field.
Daniher played 66 games in three years for Essendon between 1979 and 1981, but injuries restricted to him just 16 more before he retired.
After missing the 1982, '83 and '84 seasons following multiple knee injuries, Daniher returned to the field in 1985.
Essendon were the reigning premiers and Daniher had dreams of lifting the premiership cup that year.
Daniher worked his way back into the senior team, playing five senior games before disaster struck in a rare mid-week game.
Essendon played Norwood in Adelaide in the 1985 AFC Night Series, with the game taking place just three days after the Bombers' clash against Fitzroy.
'Footy gives you great highs and tragic lows, that's for sure. The lowest I felt as a player would have been in 1985,' Daniher said.
'I was making another comeback after two ACL knee injuries and the Bombers were the reigning premiers. And I just made my way back into the team.
'We had a mid-season competition going on at the time involving interstate teams. I was asked to back up and play in Adelaide. In retrospect, that was a dumb idea. I wasn't ready to play three games in seven days.
'Anyway, during the second quarter, I got caught in a pack, landed awkwardly and did my knee again. This time it was my good knee so I was laying on a cold floor with ice on my knee in foreign rooms on my own as the sounds of the game continued without me.
'I knew my playing career was done at the elite level and my crack at September and maybe a flag was over.'
Daniher added that the impending birth of his first child helped him get out of the injury heartbreak.
'What broke me out of the funk was that I had married Jan earlier that year, not much later we received news that we would have our first child, Lauren. That definitely helped me realise that life was more than the number on my back,' he added.
Daniher would return to the field in 1989, playing another four games before adding another seven in 1990.