Film crew following MPFNL club for concussion doco

Players at a Mornington Peninsula league club will wear mouthguards fitted with hi-tech chips as part of a documentary about concussion.

A film crew captures Seaford's celebrations on Saturday.

Television cameras were positioned around Seaford oval on Saturday capturing all the close-up action in the Seaford-Tyabb match.

The blinding brilliance of St Kilda star Jack Lonie, who kicked five goals from the middle for Seaford, would have filled a highlight reel, but that wasn’t their main focus.

A film crew is following Seaford’s men’s and women’s teams throughout the season for a documentary about the rising issue of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) in elite sports.

CTE is a brain condition linked to repeated head injuries and blows to the head.

Seaford president Dale O’Neil said 35 players had signed up to be involved in the documentary, which will follow the Tigers’ ups and downs, including interviews with current and former players.

Players will also wear revolutionary mouthguards fitted with hi-tech chips to monitor head knocks.

Seaford coach Zac Vansittart being interviewed for the documentary.

O’Neil said Seaford’s players were getting used to having cameras following them.

“They were a bit taken aback by it when we first announced it and introduced it in February,’’ he said.

“There was some body camera footage during training sessions, interaction with the players.

“But we’ve taken a backward step now, it’s going to be more behind the scenes…showing how community clubs work.’’

The players will soon wear the custom-made mouthguards, with a sensor chip inside them. The chip logs head knocks, including acute impacts and the subconcussive accumulation of the hits.

“The mouthguards will have a charging port so when they finish training or a match they put them back in the charging port and it downloads all the data from that session,’’ O’Neil said.

Young Seaford player Tyler Clark was forced to retire after suffering a heavy concussion early last season.

“I think we lost players to 21 games across men’s and women’s last season due to concussion type injuries, so it’s obviously having a pretty big impact in communities,’’ O’Neil said.

“The current return to play protocol is one size fits all, whereas if you do a hamstring you’re out for four weeks, or it could be six weeks.

“With a brain you’ve only got to sit out for 10 days and do light duties.

“We’re trying to identify a safe return to play because you only get one brain.’’

Seaford football manager Paul Kennedy said concussion in football was a “massive issue” at all levels.

“We had players miss through concussion last year fairly regularly,” he said.

“We use doctors and our physio to look after it so we’ve been pretty good I reckon but it’s a massive issue, it’s the biggest change in footy that I’ve ever seen.”