Right: Player Agent / Advocate Peter Jess has been involved with the cases of athletes from AFL and other sports where concussion is pointed to as a cause of brain injury. He says players' claims are consistent.
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Background information
The information presented below has been drawn from the Wikipedia entry 'Head injuries in the Australian Football League. The full text can be accessed at
Information has also been drawn from a Sydney Morning Herald Explainer article titled 'What are CTE and concussion and how do they affect athletes?' by Konrad Marshall, published on September 1, 2020. The full text can be accessed at
Head injuries in the Australian Football League
Head injuries in the Australian Football League (AFL) is a controversial topic with many players sustaining head-related injuries during the AFL season, some of these being caused by the players themselves 'ducking' their heads to receive a high contact which warrants a free kick. One of the most common forms of head injury sustained in the AFL is concussion, which will affect about 6-7 players per team, per season. The reason head injuries are a big concern is that they relate to an increased probability of developing forms of cognitive impairment such as depression and dementia later in life.
Physical injuries to the head
During round 6 in the 2002 AFL season, Essendon team captain James Hird suffered a facial injury after a collision with teammate Mark McVeigh during a match between Essendon and Fremantle which resulted in several bone fractures, Hird's injuries were compared to injuries seen in motor-car accidents. Former Brisbane Lions' captain Jonathan Brown is another AFL player whose facial injuries were compared to those in a car accident; the three-time award winner of the AFL's most courageous player, was injured after colliding with the knee of Fremantle's Luke McPharlin. Brown's injuries consisted of eight breaks around his eye socket, mandible, and cheek bone, which took hours of reconstructive surgery to repair.
Mental injuries, concussion and CTE
Most of the severe mental injuries associated with AFL develop later in life when the player has retired from the AFL; these injuries are sometimes a result of heavy contact to the player's head leading to concussion. Evidence suggests that some negative effects of concussion on cognitive and motor function may continue to harm the player many years after the initial injury; some research also links clinical depression to contact related concussion.
More recent research has indicated that serious mental injury can be sustained from blows referred to as subconcussive, that is, blows which damage the brain but do not result in diagnosable concussion. Repeated smaller blows to the head can also result in long term damage to the player through a condition known as Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE). CTE is a degenerative brain disease found in people with a long history of head trauma - not so much a handful of big concussions but rather hundreds (or thousands) of smaller impacts over several years.
CTE often manifests as a kind of dementia while the sufferer is alive but can only be diagnosed conclusively post-mortem. Once a person who has pledged their brain dies, they are sent to a mortuary where their brain is removed and weighed then fixed in formalin to preserve the tissue. An dissection of the brain is then undertaken which, if the person has CTE, will reveal physical abnormalities that have developed as a result of repeated brain injury. This is referred to as a 'degenerated brain'.
Since February 2020 three autopsies have been performed on former professional Australian Rules footballers and each has been shown to have CTE. Two of these players had committed suicide, an act believed to be linked to the brain trauma they had received and their resultant psychological condition.
Several scientific papers have found a correlation between multiple concussions (three or more) and a greater chance of cognitive impairment later in life, increasing the risk of everything from anxiety to epilepsy, Parkinson's disease and the nervous system disease ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. People who sustain even mild traumatic brain injuries often experience underlying neurological problems at an accelerated rate, notes Dr Mark Cook, chair of medicine at the University of Melbourne and director of neurology at St Vincent's Hospital.
Premature retirements and effects in later life resulting from brain injuries
The list of young players retiring after enduring frequent and/or severe concussions has grown to more than a dozen in recent years, including Koby Stevens, Jack Frost and Liam Picken. Others remain on doctor-ordered inactive list after a string of hits, including Patrick McCartin, 24, the number one pick from the 2014 draft, who said in an interview in 2019: 'I'm the shell of the person that I was, really. I'm completely different.'
There are also long-retired players suffering debilitating cognitive issues. including memory loss and mood swings, confusion, and seizures. Many have pledged to donate their brains to the Australian Sports Brain Bank. Player agent Peter Jess has been in touch with athletes from several sports and says there is a consistency to the issues they report.
Prevention
In recent years, the AFL have taken steps to reduce the effects of concussion and the number of players suffering it.
The AFL have modified rules of the game to protect the head of the player and reduce head contact during contests and have also given out a concussion management plan. Prevention is also up to the player as well. For a player to comply with the concussion management plan they must miss the next game; however. some players are not registering as being concussed and are risking worsening their injury by playing the next week.