A star footballer for Essendon, a key lieutenant for Sheedy

Neale Daniher, the champion footballer whose fight against Motor Neurone Disease inspired an entire nation, has passed away.

He was 65.

A member of a famous football family from Ungarie in the southern New South Weales wheat belt, he was star footballer for Essendon, whose career was cruelled by a series of knee injuries. All up, he managed just 82 games for the Bombers between 1989 and 1990, famously appearing in one game for the club with older brother Terry and younger brothers Anthony and Chris in his final season.

Once his playing days were done, he turned to coaching and possessing a brilliant football mind, he was a key lieutenant to Kevin Sheedy at the Bombers, where his role in the shock 1993 premiership and unpacking Carlton’s centre square rotations ahead of the Grand Final, will be forever appreciated.

He then moved to Western Australia in 1995 as the senior assistant coach to Gerard Neesham as Fremantle entered the AFL competition.

But he was always on the track to becoming an AFL senior coach and it was Melbourne who grabbed him in 1998 and the change in fortunes at the Demons was immediate.

They made the preliminary final in his first season in charge and then the Grand Final two years later where they ran into the brick wall that was his former club, Essendon, which had lost just one game for the season. Melbourne lost the Grand Final by 10 goals but lost no admirers in the process.

Daniher remained with the Demons and regularly had them playing finals, until he resigned midway through 2007.

He moved from coaching to football administration in 2008, and spent six seasons with West Coast as general manager of football operations.

In August 2013, he resigned from that job for health reasons and moved back to Victoria. But it wasn’t until 2014 that his diagnosis was made public. He had contracted MND and that is when the second chapter of his life began.

Using a combination of his brilliant oratory, wicked sense of humour and his football fame, Daniher set about raising awareness of the incurable disease, which he termed ‘The Beast’, to raise funds for research into MND and to assist the families of those whose loved ones who had been afflicted with it.

They took the Ice Bucket Challenge to the next level, with a Big Freeze event taking place at the MCG ahead of the annual Melbourne-Collingwood clash, with the famous ground transformed into a sea of blue beanies as the celebrities take the plunge down the slide before the game into a pool of icy water.

Through other events such as Daniher’s Drive, the fight against MND has become an Australian obsession and more than $115 million has been raised in that time.

Daniher was awarded the AO in 2021 for his work and was further honoured in 2025 when he was named the Australian of the Year.

The average life expectancy of those who contract MND is about 27 months and it was quite incredible that Daniher remained at the forefront of Freeze MND for as long as he did, and his annual media appearances in the lead-up to the Big Freeze each year inspired not just football fans but all Australians.