West Coast Eagles premiership player Peter Matera has suffered a heart attack in Victoria.

The 53-year-old is recovering in a hospital in Bendigo after the incident on Sunday when he started to have chest pains while chopping wood on his property in Moama near the Victoria-NSW border.

Matera, who played 253 games for the Eagles, has been living in the region for the past four years.

His brother Phil, who also played for West Coast, is set to fly east from Perth to be by his side.

Peter Matera was drafted fourth by the Eagles in 1989 from the South Fremantle football club and played a handful of games in his first season before breaking out in his second year.

Matera kicked five goals playing on the wing for the Eagles in the 1992 grand final against Geelong and won the Norm Smith Medal as the team won its first flag in the club’s history.

The next few seasons were the prime years in Matera’s career as he came runner-up in the Brownlow Medal count in 1994, which was the same year the Eagles won another premiership. Matera continued to play through until 2002.

Since retiring he has served as a member of the AFL tribunal and started the Matera Foundation in 2014 to provide employment pathways for Indigenous Australians.