Angus Brayshaw’s haunting performance at Monday night’s Brownlow Medal count put a human face not only on the complex relationship between contact sport and brain injuries but also upon the leadership void his forced retirement has left at the Melbourne Football Club.
Not until they saw his name on the event’s running sheet did AFL bosses Andrew Dillon and Laura Kane realise Brayshaw would be breaking his self-imposed public silence for the first time since February, when a scan he expected would green-light his return to football instead turned his world upside down.
Coach Simon Goodwin and captain Max Gawn, who previously had invited Brayshaw to speak at next Friday’s Melbourne best and fairest, were also taken by surprise. A nervous Brayshaw came onstage at Crown’s Palladium via a side entrance and left immediately after his moving tribute to the game’s 2024 retirees. He spoke to no former teammates or other football friends there on the night.
Angus Brayshaw at the Brownlow.Credit: AFL Photos via Getty Images
Gawn had spoken quite passionately about the loss of his teammate earlier on Monday when he addressed a gathering of Melbourne faithful at a Mental Demons lunch. The Demons captain, whose leadership has been sorely challenged over the past 12 months, spoke not only of how much Brayshaw has been missed but also of the deep regret held by his teammates over the nature of his enforced farewell.
Gawn voiced his disappointment that Brayshaw had ended his illustrious career carried off on a stretcher when he should have been chaired from the MCG some years later by teammates. Brayshaw’s departure came during a qualifying final against Collingwood, which Melbourne lost by seven points. In his absence a week later Carlton upset the Demons by two points, with the bad blood over the collision with Brayden Maynard and the AFL Tribunal’s hearing against the reported Magpie still fresh in Melbourne mouths.
The near-unanimous view shared across the club is that Brayshaw was Melbourne’s next captain. Goodwin decreed Brayshaw’s red-and-blue helmet would hang on the dressing-room wall before every game this year to inspire his players.
The Demons remember retired teammate Angus Brayshaw before their opening game.Credit: Channel Seven
But too often this season Brayshaw’s symbolic presence had been nowhere near enough. Clayton Oliver’s behavioural issues, which threatened to derail his football career, and Joel Smith’s positive drug test predated the Maynard collision in the qualifying final and the 28-year-old’s subsequent enforced retirement, but his absence has been linked internally as at least one reason for the club’s annus horribilis.
The fallout following Christian Petracca’s horrific King’s Birthday on-field accident exposed a disconnect among the players that came to a head over Petracca’s Noosa holiday in late winter. Two senior figures at the club who wished to remain anonymous agreed that Brayshaw’s tough-love leadership style and its unique mix of humour and drive could have taken the heat out of the resentment among the group.
Who knows whether Brayshaw could have convinced Petracca of the folly of his decision to snub the club’s Keith “Bluey” Truscott Trophy count? It was a call that Gawn unconvincingly defended this week and one that further exposed the lack of leadership at the club. Melbourne are being overseen by an interim president with a CEO controversially running a review into the Demons’ failed season. Gary Pert and his under-pressure football lieutenant Alan Richardson are searching for new leaders to bolster the football department.
But Brayshaw has had bigger issues of his own to deal with. “Days that were planned to the minute and filled with purpose need to be replaced, and in time they will be,” he said on Monday night.
“Football is all-consuming, no matter how long your career was, how successful it was, or even how well you prepared for the next stage; the transition is difficult, and there seems no easy way around it.”
For Brayshaw and his family the trauma was compounded by the fact his fiancée Danielle Frawley lost her father Danny to suicide in 2019. The famous footballer was later found to be suffering from severe chronic traumatic encephalopathy. Brayshaw’s ultimately career-ending injury came around the four-year anniversary of the Frawley tragedy and the young couple chose not to attend last year’s Brownlow.
He was initially unwilling to speak at this year’s count after Seven approached him through his uncle James Brayshaw, a senior member of Seven’s commentary team. He has not spoken publicly since his enforced retirement, having struggled to come to terms with his new circumstances.
Brayshaw has also spent two months travelling overseas and his decision to remain away from the public eye is also in part due to sensitivities surrounding his complex three-way compensation package which involves a large payout from the club, his personal insurance settlement, and the AFL Players Association’s recently bolstered injury and hardship fund.
Brayshaw also felt a little uncomfortable about his appearance before he agreed to speak on the Brownlow telecast because he was not at his playing weight. Having taken out an insurance policy with Zurich – which has since introduced a blanket head trauma exclusion from sporting claims – he has been restricted from most forms of exercise and sport as he awaits his settlement. Even his beloved pastime of golf has been off limits to him.
Goodwin told this masthead in June that Brayshaw, who had initially planned to work in a development role this season but abruptly left the club after one game working on the bench, had an open invitation to return to work at Melbourne. That invitation remains, with coach and player remaining in semiregular contact. Brayshaw also met during the year with AFL boss Dillon and more frequently with football boss Kane.
“We’ve given him the ultimate space,” Goodwin said back in June. “It was a big shock to get that news. The trauma for him made being around the club and not being able to play his usual role too difficult. It didn’t quite pan out the way we had hoped so we’ve given him big space. I’m sad for Angus and we miss him. We miss his character, we miss his form, and we miss his personality.”
Goodwin’s view is that Brayshaw, should he choose to return to football, could make a significant success of coaching or in an off-field administration role. Dillon, although acutely aware that the game needs young leaders like him coming through the ranks, said this week he wished Brayshaw only fulfillment in his life whether that came through a career in the AFL or in another sphere.
Financial security at least looms for the 2021 premiership player. His last serious head injury predated the decision by Zurich to no longer underwrite head trauma suffered in contact sport. Three AFL players – Paddy McCartin, Marcus Adams and Paul Seedsman – have received seven-figure insurance settlements, which probably helped prompt the insurer to pull the plug.
In what has proved a test case for the game, Brayshaw is the first player to have suffered a career-ending concussion with such a long-term contract. Melbourne have been negotiating with head office to push more of Brayshaw’s five-year payout outside their salary cap. Under current rules, 90 per cent of Brayshaw’s 2024 money sits outside the club’s total player payments, with 75 per cent in 2025 and 50 per cent in 2026. But Brayshaw is contracted until 2028 meaning the full amount of what could be a heavily back-ended contract must be included in the salary cap in 2027 and 2028.
That sensitive negotiation continues, with head office unwilling to over-correct at a time the game is pushing clubs to apply more rigour to reckless long-term contracts, but the industry remains confident that the AFL, while not wanting to set an example with Brayshaw, will compromise in what could otherwise prove a disastrous list-management scenario for the club.
For Angus Brayshaw, who also on Monday night paid tribute to young teenaged Western Bulldog Aiden O’Driscoll, whose AFL career was ended by a pre-season concussion before it even started, he is hopeful of a settlement with Melbourne before Christmas and potentially within the next month. To his name he has a premiership, 167 senior games, a fiancée, a close and stable family, a commerce degree and even a successful wine bar – Lenny’s – in Richmond.
Family, friends and former colleagues say he still has not found purpose in life after football. Perhaps his next move will become clearer once his settlement has been reached. But for now, Brayshaw exists in the AFL landscape as far more than a contractual and worrying medical test case for repeated head knocks. On the night the game celebrated its highest individual honour, Brayshaw’s performance cut through the event to present the human face of brain injuries suffered on the field.
And it revealed – in his own well-spoken manner and even with a touch of humour – his broken heart.
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