Right: AFL players vigorously contest for possession of the ball: in these situations, safety becomes secondary to competition. Found a word you're not familiar with? Double-click that word to bring up a dictionary reference to it. The dictionary page includes an audio sound file with which to actually hear the word said. |
Further implications
The issue of head injuries in contact sports such as AFL football is still far from resolved. It appears further research is needed to establish the extent of the risks. It is interesting that some AFL players have indicted that they will donate their brains, post-mortem, for research into the problem. This follows similar donations made by NRL players in the United States.
To this point the AFL has made a number of changes to the rules of the game to reduce the likelihood of brain injury; however, in the absence of a clear understanding of what level of body contact is needed to cause injury it is not possible to be confident that such rule changes will bring about the desired results.
The AFL has also made changes to its practices to ensure that players who are concussed during a game are sent off for the rest of that game. However, there is some concern that team doctors may be conservative in their diagnosis of concussion because they do not wish to bench a valuable player. The $50,000 fine that clubs can incur for allowing a concussed player to continue playing may serve to discourage such behaviour.
Equally likely to encourage the AFL to continue to address the issue is the growing number of players who are seeking financial compensation from the AFL for long-term brain damage which they claim is the result of brain injuries incurred while playing Australian Rules football.
The effectiveness of helmets is also disputed. Tests, now nine years old, have indicated that most helmets have no effect in reducing brain injury. However, this finding, used to justify the AFL's reluctance to require players to wear helmets, ignores the study's finding that one helmet did appear to reduce the likelihood of brain injury. Supporters of the more general introduction of helmets argue that rather than complaining that most helmets are ineffective there should be continued research to develop helmets that do work.
There is the related problem that even if helmets were to be made compulsory there would need to be a continuation of the AFL's player education campaign to teach players, coaches, parents and all community members what is required in order to play safely. There is concern that without this, even if helmets were introduced, all that is likely to occur is that players would play more vigorously and dangerously because they believed that helmets protected them.
The issue of head injury in the AFL is part of a larger cultural shift the game is seeking to undergo so that violent, dangerous play is no longer seen as adding to the excitement of the spectacle. Thus reducing head injuries joins reducing sexism, racism and off-field player hooliganism as value shifts the game needs to achieve to continue to draw a wide spectator base and to attract skilled young players at all levels of competition.