Australian rugby league great Graham Eadie has broken his silence about the horror brain condition that's reduced him to using a walker to get around and left him unable to turn on a television. The former champion fullback, who played 20 Tests for the Kangaroos, was recently diagnosed with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), decades after playing in arguably the game's roughest era. Eadie was a mainstay at the Manly Sea Eagles in the 1970s and early 1980s and was man of the match in the 1976 and 1978 grand final wins. The man affectionately known as 'Wombat' gave his first interview about his condition to Daily Mail Australia from his home on the Gold Coast. He said his rugby league career played a major role in his recent health decline. 'I think it did quite a bit. I can be good then I just forget where I am and a few of the blokes that I played with have that problem too, or had that problem before they passed away,' Eadie said. 'It's hard. It's a thing that I've got to react to. You can have these problems when you play a game like that. 'It's difficult to comprehend what happens to you in your later life after getting knocked around. Graeme Langlands was one bloke that had a problem and I know Wally (Lewis) has a bit of a problem.' It was Immortal Wally Lewis who encouraged Eadie and his wife of 23 years Leah to visit Dr Rowena Mobbs, a neurologist and the founder and director of the Australian CTE Biobank. 'Wally rang Graham and told him he had to go see Rowena,' Leah said. 'She saw him and looked at me and said 'Leah, without a doubt he's in full CTE, he's in a bad stage of it too'.' CTE is a progressive, degenerative brain disease linked to repeated head trauma, often seen in athletes who play contact sports. It is characterised by the build-up of a specific protein called tau, which damages brain cells over time. 'Graham's score on cognitive testing was 43/100 - in the severe range for cognitive impairment and reflective of a dementia picture,' Dr Mobbs told Daily Mail Australia. 'We can diagnose dementia with virtual certainty. The only uncertainty is to the type of dementia, be it Alzheimer's disease, frontotemporal dementia or CTE. 'Players with a long history of repeated brain injury, and dementia under the age of 60, in my opinion, have a substantive likelihood of CTE. We perform thorough testing and monitoring over time to improve the accuracy of diagnosis. 'A diagnosis of CTE allows best care for the patient and their family, rather than floundering without support.' In recent years, Australian sport has been rocked by the deaths of former footballers like Paul Green, Danny Frawley and Shane Tuck. They all took their lives before their autopsy's revealed they suffered from CTE. Even soccer isn't immune to the threat of sub-concussions. A 2023 study at Columbia University Irving Medical Center linked heading the ball to a decline in brain structure and function over a two-year period. The 71-year-old Eadie played 237 matches for Manly from 1971 to 1983 and had a stint in England where he won a Challenge Cup for Halifax. He was judged as one of the 100 greatest Australian rugby players of all time in 2008. He also won World Cups with Australia and the prestigious Rothmans Medal and Lance Todd Trophy. 'It was a rough time (to be playing),' he said. 'I was playing at North Sydney Oval when I got carried off (concussed) and I was taken to hospital and I didn't come to until the next day.' Eadie thought at the time that incidents like that 'were all part and parcel of the game'. 'You had to get up and keep playing (if you were concussed). There were games that I didn't remember much of,' he said. 'I was getting breaks in the forehead and I just thought that was part of the game.' Despite needing a fulltime carer and not being able to drive, turn on a television or work a microwave, Eadie said he wasn't angry with rugby league. 'I have no regrets about playing. I was playing with Manly and having a great time with guys like Terry Randall and Bob Fulton,' he said. 'I'm not dirty on the sport at all, but I'd like to see it better off for the players coming through and the kids. 'I applaud them (NRL) for doing more to look after players.' Leah started to worry about her husband in 2021 after he suffered a seizure. 'Now he's at the stage where he's got a walker and he's hunched over,' she said. 'Last year he started going into deliriums. He'd be sitting on the couch and he just wouldn't know where he was or what was happening. The CTE caused it. 'There's nothing he can do without help and he gets a lot of mood swings and he's on anti-psychotics for that.' Leah called on the NRL to help out former players struggling with probable CTE because the vast majority of them were battling the disease in silence and without help. She said those ex-players 'need to be acknowledged a bit'. 'Not everyone wants compensation, they just want to be noted and their health looked after a little bit better,' she said. 'We don't want (the game's authorities) to try and flog Rowena off but actually help her. There's a lot of players who are going to get this a lot younger than Graham.' Eadie said he still watched the rugby league every week and always tuned in to see Manly play. 'Manly are going all right at the moment but then they can have times where they have a few little problems,' he said. 'I'd just like to keep watching the game and if I can I'd like to go and see the game but it's going to be difficult to get to them without my walker.' Eadie is part of a group called 'Former International Greats', run by ex-Balmain player Larry Corowa, and they've formed a support network for each other to help battle health problems. Just last week Paul 'Fatty' Vautin and Allan Langer helped raise money for ConneCTErs at a pre State Of Origin lunch. At ConneCTErs Australia is trying to build awareness and understanding of CTE, while supporting people living with and caring for someone with CTE. Donations to the not-for-profit cause can be made here.