When was the last time you cried? It’s a simple question which evokes complex and heart-warming responses in The Last Time I Cried, a new miniseries by AIA Vitality and the AFL, featuring some of footy’s most well-known personalities. Widely regarded as being one of the game's tough nuts, former Hawk and Sun is our first guest in E1 of The Last Time I Cried. 

REVERED as a hard man of the AFL, Campbell Brown isn't associated with crying.

 "There's definitely nothing wrong with it and everyone does it," the former Hawthorn and Gold Coast forward tells Hamish McLachlan in the new series The Last Time I Cried. 

"I don't even care about being vulnerable or anything. As you get older and you become a parent, it's just life."

An emotional Brown opens up on the moment a friend reduced him to tears during a day at the races last October, hit with the memories of his late mum Kay who lost her battle with cancer in July.

"I remember it pretty vividly, actually, because it was in quite a public venue," Brown recalls. 

"Towards the end of the day a friend of mine and came up to me, put his arm around me and said, 'I'm sorry to hear about your mum, I know exactly how you feel'. 

"I said, 'Thanks very much mate, how do you know how I feel?' 

"He said, 'My mum died on Christmas Day' and with that I just burst into tears, I was just thinking how sad, Christmas is a day for family and for her to die on Christmas Day is the worst day if there ever is a bad day. 

"Then immediately it just triggered in me what I'd gone through with my mum and that'd be the first Christmas that I have without her. 

"I burst into tears." 

Kay was initially diagnosed with ovarian cancer before it spread to her spinal fluid and liver. 

But watching his mum's health slowly deteriorate after multiple surgeries and procedures, Brown is adamant family kept her going during her two-and-half-year battle. Including the arrival of one of four grandchildren, Campbell's son Boston. 

"I think that's one of the things that kept her alive and she got to see my sister (Pip) get married as well. I'm positive Boston kept her alive for six or 12 months," he says. 

"She loved him."

If Campbell was known as tough and fierce on the field, his father Mal was only a step up. 

The WA football legend is renowned as one of the most colourful figures in the game. Except when he was at the footy with Kay. 

"She's probably a bit like the rest of the Brown family, half mad," Campbell says. 

"She'd put Mal to shame at the footy. 

"He would sit there quite calm and quiet watching the game unfold, marking down notes of things I needed to improve but she was the fan and barracker. 

"She was a lover of life, loved a good time and was extremely loyal." 

In the series, partnered by AIA Vitality, McLachlan will speak to a host of big names including Trent Cotchin, Patrick Dangerfield, and Tom Boyd.