When then-Essendon speedster Conor McKenna tested positive for COVID-19 last June, some at the AFL could barely believe their bad luck.
Not just because the result threatened to cause major fixture disruption, but because of the identity of McKenna’s sole close contact in the Bombers’ squad. James Stewart was far from the most important player on Essendon’s list, let alone the AFL.
But of the league’s more than 800 players at the time, Stewart was the only one managed by Peter Jess. Jess argued that McKenna’s test had been a false positive, something health authorities could not ultimately rule out. He engaged a QC in a bid to free Stewart. Fighting to the death, generally loudly, is the only way Jess operates.
Having once acted as agent to around one-third of the then-VFL’s players, you are unlikely to see his head bob up these days when it comes to trades or free agency. Jess manages Stewart and Gold Coast rookie Joel Jeffrey among the AFL’s current players, but he remains a key player in the AFL management scene. He has instead chosen to focus on taking care of past players, not all of whom he managed during their respective playing days.
Jess has assumed a role as the public face of a quest for what he sees as justice for the legions of past players who he claims have been let down by the AFL’s handling of concussion. It has become his raison d’etre. Concerned about the impact of CTE, he lodged a complaint with Worksafe, while his long-threatened legal action against the league and a push for a $2 billion concussion redress fund among his highest-profile ideas.
Jess’ view is that this will save the game, rather than imperil it, because it will quarantine the issue of concussion, similar to what has taken place in the US.
AFL player agent and concussion advocate Peter Jess.Credit: Chris Hopkins
For the league and to a lesser extent the AFL Players’ Association, he is antagonist-in-chief, questioning every move in the realm of head injuries to footballers and accusing the league of being negligent and ignoring what he claims is incontrovertible scientific proof about the dangers of playing the game.
His detractors struggle to get their heads around his media-driven approach. But Jess says the proof is clearly in the pudding, pointing to the AFL’s changes to its game-day concussion protocols and increase in mandatory days off between games following a concussion.
“I actually generate change,” says Jess.
“I’m very strategic, I’m outcome-driven. It was generated by myriad research papers and clinical evidence presented to the AFL which gave an overwhelming outcome that returning to play under 30 days put the playing cohort at risk. No one has challenged that science or medical evidence.
“I am the AFL’s leading player advocate. I make administrators accountable to the players and the public.”
Standing up for causes is nothing new for Jess. In 1966, as a 15-year-old schoolboy at Highett High, he organised a 500-student sit-down to protest the Vietnam War.
Having studied at Caulfield Tech, Jess turned his hand to accounting. His primary occupation remains as an accountant, with the walls of his Essendon office adorned with personalised sporting paraphernalia from greats including Usain Bolt, Pele and Azumah Nelson.
In 1980, Jess began acting for his first footballer client. It was his cousin, Richmond premiership player Jim Jess. These were relatively primitive days, but word got around of the job Peter had done for Jim, and soon Peter started acting for a host of top players in the 1980s and ’90s, dealing with Warwick Capper and famously taking care of Nicky Winmar, leading to a heated television exchange with Molly Meldrum in 1993 over Winmar’s contract dispute with St Kilda.
Former Carlton player and ex-state government minister Justin Madden.
Another of those was Justin Madden, who went on to become a 300-gamer, dual premiership player at Carlton and a state Labor MP.
“The clubs found him fairly confronting because he was very upfront in looking after the interests of his players, and he’s maintained that over his professional career,” Madden said this week of Jess.
Greg Miller, the veteran former football administrator, said negotiating with Jess was a nightmare.
The two fell out several times but always patched things up eventually, with the two teaming up to run a football clinic in Argentina.
“He’s one of the strangest, differentest, brilliant men in the world I’ve ever met.”
Jess is these days much better known for his concussion advocacy but he is similarly proud of the reform he helped drive in the early years.
“When I started, professional sportsmen had no superannuation, no long-service leave, no holiday pay, very limited insurance, no access to continued learning, no access to a whole range of subsidiary services,” Jess said.
He would delve into other sports, becoming involved in soccer through Carlton soccer club and playing an advisory role in the founding of Melbourne Victory, and athletics where he worked closely with Cathy Freeman.
It was Peter Jess who handed Cathy Freeman the flag for this iconic Commonwealth Games moment in 1994.Credit: Craig Golding
But during his time working with Freeman and her former coach and partner Nic Bideau, Jess played a significant role, handing Freeman the Aboriginal flag in which she draped herself after winning Commonwealth Games gold in Victoria, Canada in 1994.
Bideau and Jess remain close.
“He’s a very unusual person. He’s a go-getter, he goes after things. It’s hard to figure out sometimes what drives him, what motivates him,” said Bideau.
“I would say he’s almost never motivated by the money.
“He also fights for Indigenous people.”
Jess says his head injury obsession stems from a couple of key episodes in his life.
The first came in 1971 when he lost the sight in his left eye in a car crash also involving Jim Jess.
Then in 2006 he was knocked off his motor scooter by a car in Melbourne’s CBD. He fractured three vertebrae in his neck, four in his back, broke nine ribs, suffered a punctured lung and a broken jaw and was unconscious for 20 minutes.
It led to years of cognitive therapy as he dealt with the lingering effects of that incident.
Then in around 2009 he started to see a string of his former player clients complain of major health and social issues. Jess started searching for answers as to whether their head knocks sustained while playing had contributed to their conditions. He looked at what was happening in the US with concussion in the NFL and saw parallels.
“It wasn’t won in the courts, it was won with public opinion,” Jess said of the NFL’s concussion settlement.
Jess may not be a scientist or a doctor, but he undertakes enormous chunks of research into head injuries.
“I’m happy to debate the science with anyone who can debate the factual evidence,” Jess says to that.
“I’ve got three post-graduate degrees, so I understand research and I understand the interpretation of data.”
While Madden sneaked him onto the MCG after the 1995 grand final, one of the other striking things about Jess is he is not really a football lover or even a sports lover. This shapes the way he comes at the discussion about the future of footy.
“I like the concept of sport, I like the concept of competitiveness, what I am saying is is that we need to create new paradigms for sport, skills-based, not collisions-based, for both men’s and women’s,” he says.
In the wake of CTE diagnoses for Polly Farmer, Danny Frawley and Shane Tuck, plus the AFL’s recent changes to its concussion guidelines, it is clear that the issue of head injuries in football is not going away any time soon.
Certainly not while Jess, 70, is punching on.
’He’ll fight the 1000-year war as he says,” said fellow agent Liam Pickering.
“He’s always been a players’ man. People can see him as hard work.
“He’s not doing it for the money. He’s doing it because he believes in the case and the cause.
“I know the AFL are probably sick to death of him, and the PA probably as well but you need voices like him in the game.”
Another long-time AFL player agent said Jess could be annoying. But that same agent also said that Jess’ lack of concern for what others say or think of him could be viewed admirably.
Jess says his long-mooted concussion legal action has been made much harder because of Australia’s Medical Records Act which he compares to those of a despotic regime.
But he keeps taking on the authorities, prepared to talk the talk and walk the walk.
“The fact is this, the guys I work for know that I am absolutely driven to help them, in whatever way I can,” Jess said.
“I’m a great friend, but I’m a horrible enemy.”