Card Shark
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Has he already been diagnosed with issues resulting from repeated concussions?
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Failing a memory test shows concussions had taken their toll for retired Dragons prop Josh Miller
Josh Miller says that the end came while drawing.
The rugged St George Illawarra prop recalls that particular moment some weeks back when, pencil in hand, he looked down at a blank sheet of paper provided by Dr Andrew Gardner and found himself struggling to continue.
For three, maybe four hours Miller had pushed diligently through a range of cognitive tests with the revered Australian concussion specialist. Determined to show how, despite being rattled to the point of unconsciousness enough times to now worry even Dragons staffers, he was ready for another punishing season of league.
"And the testing, I'd been doing really well," Miller says now, only minutes after a press conference to announce his retirement.
"But when we started on short-term memory, yeah, I struggled a bit. I'd trace out two pictures and then, a few minutes later, be asked to draw one again. Or we'd pair 10 words and, after going through them, the doc would start over; saying one and waiting for me to say the other."
And when, like the drawings, those pairings never came ... Miller was done.
"But please I don't wanna make this a concussion story," says a footballer so tough, Dragons coach Steve Price suggested he become an SAS commando.
"We play hard and sometimes stuff happens."
Sadly, it does.
Like back in April last year, when it was revealed how retired North Queensland prop Shaun Valentine - a footballer concussed seven times in only 36 NRL career games - now spends some mornings vomiting into a sink as he struggles to get ready for a job he hasn't held since high school.
"Whenever the dizzy spells come on, it's like I go back in time," the Townsville landscaper explained. "Eventually I do snap out if it ... eventually."
Just like his Dragons counterpart, Valentine had asked we not make a deal of his situation. And who can blame them?
Miller grew up gifted with none of the skills required to not only play NRL, but enjoy 122 games with Canberra and then the Dragons. Yet twice this workaholic forward was awarded Raiders player of the year.
"But talent, it's overrated," the 28-year-old shrugs. "If you're willing to tough it out and have a go, you can play NRL."
Which is why you truly hope Miller understands he's no weaker for having gone out this way. Even if it came when, returning home this week from an American holiday with new fiancee Samantha, he found both parents on his doorstep, waiting.
"They'd been told the test results," he says. "And I can cop it. But, yeah, would've played 'til 80 if I could."
Which is why the NRL needs men like Gardner, the neuropsychology specialist who recently toured Boston University's Centre for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy.
Dubbed 'The Brain Bank', the centre's research team examines donated brains from deceased NFL and NHL players in an effort to explain the increasing presence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE.
A degenerative condition, CTE leads to depression, dementia, even suicide. Or put more simply, what can happen when athletes ignore that blank piece of paper.
http://www.foxsports.com.au/nrl/nrl...many-head-knocks/story-fn2mcuj6-1226514261925
so possibly still concussed then, would you say?
