Women more prone to concussions, AFL player manager Peter Jess warns
CONCUSSION in female football players will create “an intergenerational nightmare” of mothers not remembering their children’s names and forgetting to pick them up from school, according to an outspoken AFL player agent.
CONCUSSION in female football players will create “an intergenerational nightmare” of mothers not remembering their children’s names and forgetting to pick them up from school, according to outspoken AFL player agent Peter Jess.
Jess – the man behind looming legal action by past AFL players who say they developed long-term brain injuries because of on-field concussions – wrote to the league in 2016 before the launch of the AFLW and warned of serious health implications.
Research shows women were more prone to concussions in contact sports and took longer to recover than men, Jess said.
“If we now have a new brand; women who are going to be playing collision-based sport at an underage level, that will create a whole new prism of damage,” Mr Jess said.
In male players, repeated head knocks and concussions could manifest themselves in problems with anger, depression and unpredictable behaviour, he said.
“We don’t know how (repeated concussions) present in women but if it’s the same as in men we have the possibility of mothers and carers in their 30s and 40s who … have a whole range of cognition issues,” Mr Jess said. “It is going to be an intergenerational public health disaster.”
The official AFLW 2017/2018 injury report reveals there were 14 concussions in the inaugural 2017 season and 16 this season.
Adelaide SportsMed doctor Angela Moran, who works with SANFL club West Adelaide, did not endorse Mr Jess’s claims but she has seen the ratio of concussion cases tip to women.
“Proportionately for the number of players, I’m seeing more concussions in women than men,” Dr Moran said.
“I’m thinking it’s probably because females are just taking the sport up … and they’re learning how to protect themselves. So whether rules need to be changed for women to protect their head, that’s one issue that could be raised.”
Dr Moran said further long-term research needed to be conducted into whether there was a difference in how male and female brains reacted to the injury.
“At least one female footballer I have seen over the last few months has had to leave the game just after having a long-term concussion,” she said.
The SANFL’s female programs talent manager, Robbie Neill, said steps were being taken to ensure the players were protecting themselves as best they could from injuries, including concussion.
“We’re trying to improve the ability for our players to take ground balls and be able to protect themselves,” he said.
“We always practice in our warm-ups that if a ball is rolling away from you, turning side-on to protect yourself from any frontal contact.
“They’re little strategies that we’re putting in place.”
“In saying that we’re doing this to avoid concussion, it’s also to be able to win contested ball without the fear of players hurting themselves in that situation.
“At the moment, the ball is on the ground a little bit and while the ball is on the ground it will attract more traffic to try and win it and you’ll have more parties coming in trying to win the ball and as a result, there are opportunities for collisions.
“But the players will get better at that as there is a natural evolution of the sport.”
Neill said the issue was not confined just to the female playing space and was as much an issue in the men’s game.being a tealnt manager, I’m not an expert in this field, but certainly, it’s an issue in the male space as well, this is not just confined to our female participants. He welcomed the numerous scientific studies that were being undertaken in the management of sports concussion.