One of my Favourites from the late 70’s
herald Sun article
Wife of ex-Bomber Geoff Burdett reveals heartbreaking toll of his dementia after footy career
Former Bomber Geoff Burdett can’t speak or understand his wife of 47 years — and despite neurologists linking his dementia to the head knocks he picked up in 37 games of VFL footy, he’s not eligible for a payout.
Josh Barnes
@Josh__Barnes
7 min read
May 31, 2026 - 5:00AM
Former Bomber Geoff Burdett can’t speak or understand his wife of 47 years — and despite neurologists linking his dementia to the head knocks he picked up in 37 games of VFL footy, he’s not eligible for a payout.
On Mother’s Day weekend, Mary-Anne Burdett lost her husband, Geoff, at Westfield Doncaster.
“We thought he was waiting outside. We went out and couldn’t find him,” she said.
“I rang him but because he cannot get words out or tell me things. He cannot tell me what shop he is in front of. We kept saying to him, ‘Go and find someone you can give the phone to so we can talk to them’.
“We tried and we tried and he wouldn’t give his phone to anyone.”
Mary-Anne and her daughter scanned the shopping centre looking for Geoff, only to catch a glimpse of the back of his head as he went down an escalator.
Geoff Burdett’s long football life, which saw him play 37 games for Essendon in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and the head knocks he collected along the way may have led to his brain failing him.
It means Mary-Anne carries a daily toll as she cares for her husband of 46 years, just when the pair should have been caravanning around Australia and enjoying their retirement.
Mary-Anne and Geoff Burdett before Geoff’s dementia began taking its toll.
Instead, the caravan is for sale and Mary-Anne wonders what her life will look like in the years to come and how she will pay for Geoff’s care.
To apply for the AFL Players’ Association’s severe injury benefit scheme, Mary-Anne painstakingly went through the medical records in Geoff’s file, dating back to 2019, and gathered supporting evidence from neurologists and speech pathologists about Geoff’s condition of progressive primary aphasia – a type of dementia that can wipe out language skills.
His neurologist sees a link between the unstoppable disease and his long life of football, including the concussions he picked up along the way in his 37-game career in the big league with Essendon.
But his age meant Geoff, 70, was never going to receive a payout as part of the AFLPA’s scheme.
A FOOTBALL LIFE
Geoff Burdett’s life – and that of his family – has always been tied to football.
His VFL high came in 1978 when he booted 37 goals from 20 matches for the Bombers under first-year coach Barry Davis.
The young death of Geoff’s father saw him return home before his time, but he stayed in the game for decades and worked for the AFL in game development for 15 years.
He was the first coach of the Southern Mallee Giants, formed in the Horsham District Football League in 2015 after a merger between rivals Hopetoun and Beulah.
The Giants won the flag in 2016 and held a reunion in Geelong in March.
Geoff wanted to go, but Mary-Anne had to make the speech.
“I had to speak, so I spoke because he can’t speak,” she said.
“I just spoke on his behalf and said what I thought he would want to say.”
Burdett was a premiership-winning coach at the Southern Mallee Giants in 2016 — but unable to speak at the 10-year reunion this year. Picture: Georgia Hallam
It was Geoff’s daughter who first noticed he was “not quite right”, when he was 63.
“I had just sort of been getting cross with him but I think it takes someone else to really notice it,” Mary-Anne said.
Scans and doctors’ appointments delivered the diagnosis.
Geoff may still be fit in the body but his mind is failing him.
Geoff often goes on bus trips from their Horsham home with others who suffer from different dementia battles and when he gets home he can’t fill Mary-Anne in on where he has been. He can’t understand about her day either.
“He just can’t say much,” Mary-Anne said.
“He is just such a typical younger onset because he is so able-bodied but his brain is just frizzled.
“From the minute he wakes up in the morning he is trying to tell me things but he just can’t.”
The former Bomber perks up sometimes when he watches the football.
He has good mates who take him golfing and help him on course when they can and Mary-Anne tries to get him out on a bike ride.
Most often though, he will sit with a texta in hand and colour.
Mary-Anne bought a tablecloth for Christmas that the kids could scribble on and Geoff was the one who took to it most.
“When they (kids) finished, he just kept going at this cloth and kept at it and at it until he finished the cloth,” she said.
“He finished it and I thought, ‘I need some colouring books’.
“Anyway, he enjoys it.”
Concussions from Burdett’s playing days have been linked to his
The disease means Mary-Anne is left spending her time thinking about caring for her husband instead of living their planned life together.
A recent doubles golf competition caught her eye until she remembered it would be too tricky and confusing for her husband.
She ferries him to Ballarat for speech pathology sessions, or to the neurologist, instead of planning caravan adventures.
Possibly the hardest day among a long list of hard days came when Geoff lost his driver’s licence – a final blow to his independence.
The day he got his full diagnosis, he and Mary-Anne were told to go and do what they can in their life together, because there was no solution to the creeping disease about to take over his mind.
The setbacks mean Mary-Anne is always doing a double take when she plans out a day or a week.
“I pull out of a lot of things. I have to think twice about what we are doing and where we are going,” she said.
“It is always thinking. As soon as you wake up in the morning it is thinking, ‘Am I going to be able to do this? What will I do with Geoff?’
“It is just overtime.
“It is just what it is. So many people have said to me, ‘You are so strong’. But you have to be. What can you do? You have to be. I can’t fold, I can’t get sick.”
BLOCKED BY AGE
Determined past players advocate Barry Besanko urged Mary-Anne to apply for the AFLPA’s benefit scheme but the criteria meant it was the longest of shots.
Correspondence sent to applicants – seen by Code Sports – from the independent company Crawford, which runs the injury fund, outlines that footballers will only receive payouts if they have had their cognitive or bodily function hit and it “results in their future earning capacity to normal retirement age being reduced by at least 40 per cent”.
Geoff was pulled off his last job driving a car as a “pilot” in front of trucks that shipped machinery parts as his disease hit him in 2019 and he was placed on light duties.
Mary-Anne thought he would work into his 70s – and take one day off each week for golf – but she was told he was unsuccessful in winning a payout because of his age.
As part of the application, a letter from Geoff’s neurologist read in part: “I am aware that Geoffrey has sustained a number of head injuries in the past with his time as a football player, with severe concussions. As concussion and head injury is a risk factor in dementia I would support him in assigning any financial remuneration available to him if available as a result of concussion or head injury.”
Essendon coach Kevin Sheedy with Max Crow, Geoff Burdett and Peter Bennett.
Besanko said the criteria was unfair to older players and finding documents such as playing contracts and club medical records, were too difficult for those who played in by-gone eras.
“There is no consideration for lapse of time,” Besanko said.
“Those guys at the very worst should have medical bills paid for. It is not just the future to worry about, it is the loss of work opportunities along the way as well.”
Besanko, a vice-president of the AFL Combined Past Players’ Association and active member of Essendon’s past players group, said the Bombers’ past players had tried to help out those who donned the sash with medical expenses.
It has also formed a fund to pay for counselling sessions for partners of players who are suffering.
Mary-Anne isn’t planning to appeal the benefit scheme verdict and is focused on trying to make the most of her time with Geoff.
“When they knocked me back I just thought, ‘So be it, I tried’,” she said.
But she does have those creeping thoughts of what the future may hold.
“It is a natural instinct to think forward,” she said.
“You know what I worry about in the future? These homes cost so much money, to put him in care. But I will want to try to keep him home as long as I can.
“But when it comes to that stage, I won’t want to do it, but I have to do it. Then you have to think of the financial side of it as well.”
Geoff was just one of many applicants who failed to receive some much-needed money to help with medical and living expenses and Mary-Anne often ponders how many others are out there like her husband.
In the end, football may have taken so much from Geoff.
But he is still not completely lost to it.
Most weeks Mary-Anne and Geoff will go and watch their eldest son Clint, who coaches at Kalkee and still plays at age 43.
“We go out and watch Clint every week which Geoff enjoys,” she said.
“Once upon a time he would have gone over and stood with the men and talked about the game but because he can’t, we just sit in the car.”
Even from the passenger seat near the boundary line at a local football game, Geoff’s separation from his old life is a reminder of what he has lost.
But even there, and everywhere else, he has his dedicated and tireless wife sitting alongside him, keeping him going.