Footy legend Brett Ratten opens up about his 12-year-old daughter’s heartbreaking health battle that saw her suffer up to 30 shocking attacks every day

Brett Ratten has experienced turbulent times as a head football coach in the AFL, but nothing compares to the family tragedy he has endured.

Now he has revealed how painful it is to learn his daughter suffers from epilepsy, on the same day he was supposed to be celebrating his return to the AFL coaching ranks.

The former Carlton player and coach’s daughter Tilly was diagnosed with right frontal lobe epilepsy on the same day he became St Kilda’s senior coach in 2019.

Tilly suffered up to 30 seizures a day and had problems with her parenting. She often woke up confused after nighttime episodes that resembled sleepwalking.

Ratten and his wife Joanne were terrified that she might hurt herself or worse if she had a seizure in the schoolyard.

“Her attacks are a little different,” Ratten told the newspaper Between Us podcast with Sarah Olle and Nat Edwards.

‘We didn’t know if it was absent epilepsy or focal epilepsy. Her head went to the side, and then you saw the whites of her eyes and she stopped and froze and paused for 20 or 30 seconds.

‘She was given up to 30 a day, but when the medication came in it started to affect her balance and she started to fall.

‘That was a worrying time. We thought: will this be on the schoolyard? She could be up [on] the swings or something like that and just fall off.”

It was a major disruption to Tilly’s early learning, with the Ratten family having to take her home at lunchtime every day because she was so tired.

Fortunately for the Ratten family, medical intervention helped and the seizures are now under control.

“It can take a long time for some families to try to make amends,” Ratten said.

‘We were lucky, it lasted about three months and the attacks started to stop.

“But touch wood, she’s doing really well. We’ve learned how to deal with it and all that, and she gets constant assessment, which is great.

“She’s 12 now and as you know, as you grow through the years, the brain changes and all that stuff.

“So we’re just trying to make sure we have everything in order.”

Ratten’s candid confession about Tilly comes after the heartbreaking death of his 16-year-old son Cooper in a car crash in 2016.

The teenager died after the vehicle was hit by a drunk driver, who was convicted and sentenced to five years in prison.

Since then, the Ratten family has shunned the public eye and social media to close ranks and care for each other.

“We will never see where Cooper’s life would have taken him,” Joanne Ratten, Cooper’s stepmother, said at the time.

‘Our grief is immeasurable.’

When Ratten was appointed coach of St Kilda in 2019, Joanne said: “Probably after Cooper’s accident we put on the brakes and just concentrated on the family.”

Now Ratten has spoken about the pain of Tilly’s diagnosis so soon after his son’s death – and how he wishes he could take her pain away.

“Your heart goes out to the thought: Can you give it to me? And then I can deal with it. But that’s not possible,” he said.

“The great thing was we found out what it was so you can start the process of dealing with it.”

It took much longer for Ratten to come to terms with his son’s death.

He admitted that he had hallucinations while driving when he saw the car that killed Cooper, rather than other motorists.

His sadness would be deeply suppressed by his football successes, only to be immediately triggered by songs, birthdays and occasions such as Father’s Day.

‘After a week or two I went back to work and off we went [Melbourne Demons] played in the final and before you knew it we were in the grand final. It was like a whirlwind.

“I think it was the moments afterward [when Ratten struggled].

‘This is what happens around grief. Usually the support is so tight at first and there are many people present.

“As time goes on, there’s that ripple effect and the support becomes more and more distant… that’s when it really starts to sink in.”

‘You have that time for yourself, birthdays, all those things that play a role and create memories.

“I think I’ve seen that car Coop was in so many times. All I could see was that car on the road.

‘Something unconscious was looking for it, I don’t know.

‘A song, a birthday, even Father’s Day. There are things you don’t even think about, but as the year goes by, it’s the dates and memories that come flooding back.

“It took us some time to accept it.”

It wasn’t until five years later that Ratten said he was finally able to rationalize and process what had happened.

“On the night of his 21st, we had a great night and celebrated his life more and thought about it that way,” he said.

“That took almost five years.”

“There’s no golden rule for this, but having someone to talk to can help.”

When it comes to football, Ratten is one of the unluckiest coaches in modern history. He was released by Carlton and St Kilda before his contract expired, before making way for Alastair Clarkson’s return to North Melbourne.

The years of football and family pressure have taken their toll and Ratten revealed he would not raise his hand to become a head coach in the AFL again.

“That’s why I’ll never think about anything like that again,” he said.

Ratten subsequently revealed that Carlton’s dismissal had damaged his confidence in his own abilities.

‘For me personally, the first time I was fired, I felt it coming a little bit. There was a bit of momentum, I knew I was fighting for my career a bit towards the end.

“But that made me lose a lot of confidence.”

He regained his mojo while working as an assistant coach at Hawthorn, but admitted he was blindsided by the sacking of St Kilda.

“I didn’t really see it coming,” Ratten said.

“I wondered why a few things happened that made me think, but I thought, ‘that.’ [being sacked] couldn’t happen’.

‘Then that happened.

‘Would I do it again? I might do it a little differently. But I don’t get the chance to do it and that’s okay.

“I’ve had my time and now it’s up to others to do it.”