Williams farmer Jamie Anderson opens up on struggles with incomplete quadriplegia seven years after injury

Jamie Anderson heard a crack, his body went limp and breathing became “an issue”. “For a split-second I thought, this is it,” the Williams farmer, now 40, recalled of a life changing football injury in the wheatbelt town of Katanning in August, 2015. “And then I thought I am not going to die today, not here.” Seven-and-a-half years on, and the struggle is still in Anderson’s face every waking and sleeping moment as he adjusts to life with incomplete quadriplegia. An accidental knee to the back of his head resulted in neck dislocation, C2, C3 and C4 vetebra fractures and damage to a blood vessel that led to a stroke. His right side is severely affected. He can walk with aid of a crutch which hurts his shoulder and drives a modified car, but can’t regulate his body temperature, so testing hot water can be an issue. He falls over often. “I’m like a 95-year-old man,” he says. “In the cold weather I cramp up and talking can be difficult when I am stressed.” The costs of weekly physiotherapy, massage, medication and mental health checks are mounting. He estimates it at $11,000 a year. He had a hip replacement in 2021. Anderson feels dudded. Not just by life, but by the system. A system in which he has been knocked back four times by the National Disability Insurance Scheme and offered what he calls a “paltry” $75,000 through the AFL’s insurers. A $70,000 ex gratia payment from the West Australian Football Commission has helped, but he has knocked back the AFL insurer in the hope of a better offer later on. The maximum insurance payout was $20,000 at the time of Anderson’s injury. It has since been lifted to $60,000. A letter from the AFL to Anderson in 2019 referred to a revised capital benefit which “reflects a significant amount over and above the entitlement under the applicable policy”.The gaps are wide on the balance sheet and in life. But Anderson felt so let down by the system he wrote a letter to AFL chair Richard Goyder which read in part: “The level of insurance cover that has been offered to me is extremely poor when you look at the injury I have sustained and the effect it has had on my ability to work for myself and produce the maximum amount of income I can,” he wrote. “When you combine that with the pain and discomfort I live with daily, the effect on my personal and social life and the extra care expenses I will incur as I get older, this injury will have an enormous financial effect on me.” Rendered incapable of operating his family’s 5000-acre sheep and grain farm on his own sweat and muscle, it’s now leased out in part on a share basis. Anderson takes care of the accounts, but can’t do what he used to: Put up fences, weld damaged water tanks, tend to the sheep. All the fun stuff. “I am not needed from an operation point of view and that has taken a lot of pressure off me,” he says. News that the WAFC is to set up a fighting fund for community footballers is like drought-breaking rain on dusty crops. It will help, but there is still plenty of pain ahead. “Knowing down the track you are going to have cover from a medical point of view, it helps,” he says. “As you get older your body wears out naturally but mine has been set back so much more that I don’t know what I am going to be like in 10, 20, 30 years.” Anderson remembers the pain of that August day in Katanning, of trying to breathe and then waiting for an hour to be put in an ambulance before being flown to Perth. He had a tracheostomy, was put on a ventilator for 10 days and spent three weeks in ICU in Perth. Another 11 weeks were spent in rehabilitation at Fiona Stanley Hospital in a spinal brace. “It was horrible. Couldn’t sleep. Always in an awkward position. All the medication they pump into you which makes you hallucinate and have funny dreams,” he recalls. “It was a relief to get out of there. I just wanted to get to the next stage. “Then after a couple of weeks … there was movement coming back and I was feeling pretty positive. Every night I kept telling myself ‘You are going to get better’. And there was a lot of help early in the “acute” phase. “Mentally I wasn’t too bad. It was really once I got out that it turned. I thought once I got home and got back around the farm, my life would go back to normal. But after a while. The end of 2016. That’s when I started to break down.” Anderson’s son Logan was born seven months after the accident. He split with his former partner, who is now living on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland. “I wasn’t handling things and having a new baby was difficult,” he says. “Then once my partner at the time headed back to Queensland … that’s when it hit home. “I was stoked to have him in the world, but I wasn’t in a capacity that I wanted to be. “And now he is in Year 2. He is full on running around, playing footy, learning to surf. “I tell him all the time I can’t go as quick as you and keep up. He is learning to understand that.” Now Anderson has made the big decision to move to the Sunshine Coast to be closer to his son. “That has been tough the last few years. He’s come over a couple of times, but it is pretty emotionally draining,” he said. “It has been a slow, hard slog to feel better about things. Deciding to move over there, it is just necessary. I can’t handle the distance. When we were apart I felt lost again. I didn’t know where I was at. So I’ve bitten the bullet and decided to make a change.” It’s estimated WA community clubs, in the metropolitan and regional areas, pay the national insurer (Marsh, formerly JLT) $800,000 a year in premiums. Dad Alex describes the level of insurance offered to his son as “utterly disgraceful”. “Having worked alongside him for 15 years on the farm, I know what he was capable of and what he could do,” Alex says. “That hurts to see it taken away. Just the suffering he has gone through and is going through.” Alex says he and his wife Sandra have the wherewithal to help their son but is more concerned about the next footballer injured. “There are all these kids playing footy at the weekend, men, women, children, thinking they are covered by insurance but it is a dead duck,” he says. “I’d hate to see it happen to someone who couldn’t afford it.” Alex has no beef with the WAFC who followed up the issue with the AFL and now have agreed to establish a Charitable Trust, with the model proposed by former barrister and WA football identity Brian Sierakowski. “It’s a great idea. I commend Siera for coming up with it,” he said. And what advice would Jamie have to footballers who think they are covered? “Think again, read the fine print, get yourself some personal protection away from footy because you never know what might come. That’s not just in footy, that’s in work and day to day life,” he says. “It’s such a shock to the system. There is a part of me that still thinks it all feels surreal.” Sadly, it’s all too real.