How the AFL legend and Australian of the Year changed the game and the fight against motor neurone disease
In the final interview that led to his appointment as manager of the Melbourne Football Club in late 1997, Neale Daniher faced a sharp question from the Demons’ then chairman and financial white knight, Joseph Gutnick.
“What are you going to do when we lose five games in a row?” asked Gutnick, who had just sacked Daniher frontman Neil Balme. he asked.
“Don’t worry about me, Joe,” Daniher replied. “What will you do?”
Neale Daniher did not shy away from pithy jokes or epigrams that were both irreverent and serious about the meaning of life.
A Daniherism was used by the Demons in their victorious 2021 grand final in Perth, adorning the team’s rooms before the match and cited by captain Max Gawn as a catalyst for their comeback.
“When all is said and done, more is said than is done,” he wrote.
Daniher is one of the few people in Australian public life whose death can capture the tributes of the prime minister, the veteran coach of the last two AFL premierships – his close friend and colleague Chris Fagan – and those battling the motor neurone disease that made him a towering national figure and the 2025 Australian of the Year.
Daniher, of course, doggedly fought this most damaging disease both physically and as a public defender, and he did so without a hint of the self-pity that everyone has the right to feel.
Daniher’s public life had three distinct phases.
Act One was an unlikely champion, second brother to Daniher from the famous Riverina clan; He was a bright, smooth halfback winger who, in the description of his talented teammate Tim Watson, “stepped into the Essendon halfback line straight from Assumption College”.
“If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing. He got me out of nothing… It was a pretty brave decision… It made me believe in myself as a coach.”
Chris Fagan
Daniher played 66 consecutive games for the Bombers; most of this was in the company of his successful brother Terry; before a succession of knee injuries, first sustained in the final home and away tour of 1981, derailed his career on the cusp of superstardom.
Neale was subsequently considered the Danihers’ pick. He was the steak knives in the Swans’ (then South Melbourne) disastrous trade that replaced star forward Terry with center Neville Fields.
Watson did not think the comparison with Carlton’s quiet defender Bruce Doull was unreasonable; Neale had taken on Essendon’s best and fairest in ’81, snatching an almost unwinnable game for the Dons at Princes Park when he was slid forward with nerveless goals in the 30th and 31st minutes.
Watson said Daniher, who was appointed captain in 1982 and struggled with knee problems that would plague him for years, was a serious player with a determined approach despite “being a Daniher and loving beer” and joking. “When he decided to do something, he did it.”
This decision will serve him and the MND cause well.
Part Two of this Shakespearean drama was his famous coaching/football operator career; Much of this was due to his almost a decade as coach of the Demons, whom he guided to the finals series in six of the ten years, despite the rundown facilities at his Junction Oval base and the relatively modest talent on his playlist.
Former Melbourne vice president and Fight MND founding chairman Bill Guest, one of Daniher’s closest friends, said “the roof is collapsing and rats are running around” in the Junction Oval area.
Guest said “honesty and integrity” were Daniher’s constant features as he coached the Demons, who reached the 2000 grand final and were crushed by Essendon, where he also served as Kevin Sheedy’s assistant.
“He would never bullshit a player or anything – even if they weren’t any good,” said Guest, who saw Daniher last Thursday and thought it was a blessing that he passed away at his home in Canterbury.
To this journalist, Neale might have seemed a little reticent, coming from Ungarie as a straightforward man with a hard edge who manipulated neither words nor actors.
But he was smart; Melbourne’s then chief executive (and late 2000s) Cameron Schwab had cited Daniher’s intelligence as a key factor in his recruitment from Fremantle (Gerard Neesham’s assistant coach). His outspokenness and underlying interest earned him authority and he found a receptive audience from his veteran players such as David Neitz, David Schwarz, Adem Yze, James McDonald and Brad Green.
Fagan was moved to tears on Monday when she heard her husband was finally leaving after nearly a dozen years fending off MND and losing his capacities. “We were the same age and he was like an older brother to me,” the Brisbane Lions coach told this imprint.
In 1990, with Sheedy’s encouragement, Daniher directed a play by himself with all three brothers (Terry, Anthony and Chris).
Fagan felt he owed his career as an AFL coach to Daniher, who recruited the Tasmanian from relative obscurity and made him his right-hand man for the entirety of Neale’s tenure in Melbourne. “If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t have done what I did. He got me out of nowhere…it was a pretty brave decision.”
Fagan agreed that Daniher was absolutely honest, adding on a personal level: “He made me believe in myself as a coach.”
This Second Act of Daniher’s public life included a brief spell as CEO of the AFL Coaches Association, before taking on the challenge of helping John Worsfold restore the morale and fabric of a fallen West Coast team as the club’s football boss.
Sheedy wanted Daniher to succeed him as senior coach in 2007 and pushed for it. As Guest recalled, he thought Daniher had a good chance of getting into the business.
But the Essendon hierarchy were determined to turn the page on the Sheedy era, rejecting both Daniher and a less experienced version of Damien Hardwick for former Tiger Matthew Knights, the first of several Bombers coaches to quickly disappear through the Windy Hill or Tullamarine trap door.
The lavish homecoming never materialized. Despite his impressive track record in challenging conditions in Melbourne, no other club has hired Daniher as a senior coach. Fagan has long argued that his friend should coach again.
“When I think about it, it would be a great appointment,” Watson said of Daniher’s failure to return to Essendon.
MND intervened in 2013 and found both tragedy and the most uplifting of stories in Act Three of Daniher’s life; This incident led to national attention to the Great Freeze on the King’s Birthday at the MCG and the disease that was slowly overcoming it.
So, in addition to a state funeral, when the Demons play Collingwood on June 8, some 90,000 people filling the MCG with blue berets and many more watching celebrities skate for MND will underline what Neale Daniher’s life meant.
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Jake Niall is a Walkley-winning sports journalist and The Age’s chief AFL writer.Connect with: X or email.
