Tribunal decision shows major codes cannot regulate player safety
The decision to allow Brayden Maynard to escape punishment for his hit on Angus Brayshaw has done the game, and its players, a disservice.
In what was a significant test case to gauge how much player safety meant to the game, the AFL tribunal has horrifically failed in its duty of care.
The decision to clear Collingwood’s Brayden Maynard and allow him to play in next week’s preliminary final against either Port Adelaide or GWS has shown the game’s true colours when it comes to head trauma.
‘Footy incidents’ can trump player welfare.
The AFL tribunal has done the game a disservice.
Tuesday night’s decision makes a mockery of the AFL’s oft stated claim that the head is sacrosanct. The executives may believe it, but they cannot bring everyone in the game with them – in this case the tribunal.
Playing on the edge is alive and well and it stinks. If you hurt someone, like Maynard did with his hit, knocking out Brayshaw for over two minutes, there are no consequences.
Tuesday night’s tribunal hearing that went for nearly four hours was a fruit salad of semantics, a biochemist, cars, debating points about whether or not Brayshaw strayed from his lane – yet somehow in among ridiculous arguments the victim was completely ignored. It was ultimately concluded what Maynard did, his act that left the Demons on-baller out cold on the MCG turf, was not reckless even though it caused a brain injury?
Last week the Senate inquiry into concussion in sport delivered a raft of recommendations around the regulations when it came to head trauma and collision sports like Australian football. Tuesday’s night’s tribunal decision chaired by Jeff Gleeson suggests that some are not listening closely enough to the ramifications that contact sport is having on its players, past and present – or how the league governs its game.
The Senate inquiry has already recommended that the government have a good look at how the major football codes are run – and whether it is safe. The inquiry made no mention of the AFL’s tribunal processes but maybe it should have.
Four players have retired from the AFL this season because of concussion; Paul Seedsman, Marcus Adam, Paddy McCartin and Max Lynch. This year AFLW player Heather Anderson took her own life, she was found to have CTE post-mortem; she was 28.
On Tuesday morning Melbourne coach Simon Goodwin said the case would define what players’ duty of care looked like in such “football acts”.
“Ultimately, we’re looking at what a duty of care looks like in this space,” Goodwin said.
“To have a player concussed (unconscious) for two minutes, I think we’re all looking at the different types of footy acts that are out there and the space that we’ve come to in this area.
“We’ve come a long way as an industry about how we protect the head – whether that be within tackles, within bumps, with a whole range of different football acts.
“This is another example of what does a duty of care look like in a football act and the whole footy world will be looking at what the outcome of this result is and we’ll certainly be one of those clubs.”
The AFL players have been failed.
Decisions like the Maynard case render talk about player safety as meaningless. It’s just words.
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