A century of seasons in the VFL/AFL has thrown up many significant moments for the club that joined as Footscray in 1925 and now proudly plays as the Western Bulldogs.

Many of those moments have been ones of great joy, but some significant moments are weighted with tragedy. 

Exactly 50 years prior to this weekend’s game between the Bulldogs and the Brisbane Lions at Norwood Oval, the Fitzroy Lions visited Western Oval in Footscray on Saturday, 12 April 1975.

The Dogs were coming off a disappointing loss to Melbourne in the season’s opening round and were looking to make amends in their first home game of the year.

Playing in his second game for the Bulldogs that day was a boom recruit from South Australia, Neil Sachse. The 24-year-old from North Adelaide had shown signs of his star potential in Round 1, collecting 14 possessions and kicking a goal on debut at the MCG.

Against Fitzroy in his second VFL match, Sachse again looked comfortable at the game’s elite level, and made a solid contribution to what would ultimately be an impressive 33-point win against the Lions.

However, tragedy struck as the Bulldogs were cruising towards victory. Late in the final quarter Sachse grabbed the ball in the Dogs’ forward line but stumbled as he looked to wheel around towards goal. That stumble resulted in an accidental head-on collision with Fitzroy’s Kevin O’Keeffe, leaving Sachse prostrate on the turf.

With Sachse not moving, the seriousness of the collision became immediately apparent to nearby players of both sides. Trainers arrived at Sachse’s side within seconds, and they immediately signalled for a stretcher.

Over the next few minutes an eerie hush descended over the ground, as the crowd also began to understand the gravity of the incident. Sachse was carefully placed onto the stretcher and carried off. After a long delay, play resumed and the Dogs added a couple of last-minute goals to make it a seven-goal-to-one final quarter and a comfortable victory.

The win should have been cause for celebration among Footscray fans and players alike, but the mood was sombre as the two teams left the field.

By now Sachse was in the Bulldogs dressing room, waiting for an ambulance to arrive. He was fully conscious, but a conversation with medical officers gave him a clue that something was seriously wrong.

Recalling the exchange in a 2009 interview on ABC TV, Sachse said: "While we were waiting for the ambulance to go to the hospital I suggested they should take off my shoes or my football boots, and they said, 'Oh, we did that long time ago.' So I thought I might be in a bit more trouble than I think I am. It started to hit home a little bit then."

Hospital surgeons confirmed that Sachse had suffered a broken spine in the collision. The injury left him a quadriplegic, facing the reality that he would spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair.

It’s difficult to imagine the emotional devastation Sachse must have experienced over the following days. Not only had his football career come to a sudden end, but his entire life had changed forever.

"I had a wife and two young kids at the time. I wanted to enjoy their company, so I made sure that I tried to maintain a positive attitude and get out there and do things," he recalled in 2009.

Adopting such an attitude in the face of a monumental challenge revealed Sachse’s on-field courage was matched – if not exceeded – by his off-field braveness.

"It's no good blaming anybody else, he said. “I don't know whether it's just in my make-up … but I had seen a lot of people while I was hospital who just seemed to want to blame everything else, even though they were part of the accident.”

That inspiring attitude led to Neil Sachse having an active and productive life over the next four and a half decades. As well as being a husband and father, Sachse helped create the Neil Sachse Foundation, which would go on to raise millions of dollars for research into spinal injuries and their treatment.

But back in April 1975, all that was still to come. Those who were playing alongside and against Sachse that day suffered trauma of a different sort. The incident had an impact on many of them which lasted for many years after. Most did not speak openly about it, such was the prevailing attitude towards mental trauma back in the ’70s.

Years later, Sachse’s Bulldogs teammate Gary Dempsey recalled the effect of the accident on the team. “That Footscray side at the time had so much talent we could have done anything, but it just blew us all apart,” he said.

Bulldogs captain Laurie Sandilands was a star that afternoon, kicking eight of Footscray’s 17 goals. But what should have been happy memories of one of his greatest games were overshadowed in the years that followed.

With the benefit of hindsight and changing attitudes, Sandilands is now able to recognise what he and his teammates endured as they struggled to process what they’d witnessed.

“We didn’t know what we were dealing with, but it affected all of us in different ways,” Sandilands told Code Sports in 2022. “It wasn’t until Neil passed away (in 2020) that Peter Welsh, Ross Abbey, Graham Joslin and I started talking about it on a Zoom meeting.

“The release only came then, when I was able to freely talk about it and how I felt. It’s been an incredible thing. I finally was able to come to terms with it.”

Of course Fitzroy players were also traumatised by the event, not least Kevin O’Keeffe, the player with whom Sachse had collided. Although the collision was entirely accidental, O’Keeffe was naturally extremely distressed by its consequences. However, one positive to come out of the sad tale was that O’Keeffe and Sachse became great friends in the years afterwards.

Fifty years after the accident that changed Neil Sachse’s life forever, the vagaries of the AFL fixture have brought the Dogs and Lions together on the same date. Adding further poignancy, the teams will meet in Adelaide, Neil’s home city. Appropriately, his widow Janyne and son Ben will be in attendance at the game, as guests of the club.

The Bulldogs will be hoping to repeat the result of the match played exactly 50 years earlier of course but more importantly, everyone watching on will be hoping for an injury-free game.