Tigers great fractures ankle after collapsing on golf courseJon Pierik
The Age
17 January 2017Richmond premiership great Dale Weightman has described his shock collapse while playing at Mildura Golf Club as a "wake up call" after his blood sugar levels dropped, leading to a fractured left ankle.
Weightman, who was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes during his playing career, is in plaster and will soon have a moon boot for up to two months, having undergone emergency surgery at the Epworth hospital last Tuesday.
"They had to put a couple of screws in and took out a bit of bone. I am out of action for a little while, for six to eight weeks," he revealed on Monday.
"I am in half plaster for about 10 days, then I go into a moon boot for six to seven weeks."
Weightman, who works in the Tigers' fan development department, was enjoying his early-morning round of golf in warm weather with his brother and nephew when he suddenly collapsed.
"I got to the 13th hole and I was feeling a bit wonky. I thought: 'I am gone here'. What happens when you have a hypo (hypoglycaemia), your whole body collapses, and you roll on your back," he said.
"I was playing with my younger brother and one of his sons. When they came back, my brother tried to pick me up and I just collapsed ... that's when I did all the damage. What normally happens is you leave the guy on the ground and you feed him the sugar or the lolly or the soft drink to get him up and about. It was one of those things."
Weightman was taken by buggy to the clubrooms and iced his ankle for an hour, before being driven to the nearby hospital. It was then that his 1980 premiership connections came in handy.
"I rang around in emergency when they took all the pictures. They said: 'You need to see an orthopedic surgeon and do you know any of them?' Because I work at the Tigers, I contacted the doctors at Richmond but they were, obviously, all on holidays. I used all my contacts ... then I finally got on to the 1980 premiership doctor, Ben Weiss. It was great," Weightman said.
"I was going back to Melbourne on the Sunday anyway, so he spoke to the doctor in Mildura, they got it all exactly how he wanted it.
"It had to be plastered up behind the knee. I had to keep it straightened. I couldn't bend it or anything - it was a long trip in the car from Mildura to Melbourne. I had the whole back seat."
Weightman, 57, said the collapse was "one of those things".
"It would have been a little bit scary. When I got back and came to, I was fine ... what I normally do is, I decrease my insulin so I can get through the game. What I didn't do was decrease it enough," he said.
"It was a big walk around and it was hot, so it was a bit of management that went wrong ... that sometimes happens. This is the first time it's happened this bad to me. It's a bit of a wake-up call."
Weightman, nicknamed "the Flea", was a dynamic, goal-kicking rover, who played in 274 games from 1978 to 1993, including the 1980 flag.
A regular Victorian selection during the State-of-Origin era, he was named in the Tigers' Team of the Century and is in the AFL Hall of Fame.
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