Pucovski taking legal advice on concussion retirement

Will Pucovski is taking legal advice amid drawn-out negotiations with cricket authorities over the circumstances of his exit from the game and the value of compensation he may receive.

Two senior cricket sources, speaking on condition of anonymity because negotiations are confidential, confirmed Pucovski had legal representation in talks with Cricket Victoria.

Will Pucovski is attended by medical staff after being hit on the helmet batting for Victoria in March.Credit: Getty Images

The matter also involves Cricket Australia and the Australian Cricketers Association, with significant implications for other instances of concussion or injury-related exits from cricket and how players are insured.

While the football codes are closer to knowing how they will properly compensate players forced to stop playing due to concussion, cricket is still in the early stages of its wrestle with the issue.

In terms of medical retirements by young players with plenty of years left in them if not for concussion, Pucovski has precedents like those of the ex-Brisbane Lion Justin Clarke, or his friend and 2023 Collingwood premiership defender Nathan Murphy. Losses of future earnings were considerations in each of those cases.

Pucovski, 26, was felled by a bouncer in a Sheffield Shield game in March, suffering the latest in a long series of concussions that have left him experiencing symptoms for months afterwards.

Pucovski was considered a generational talent. Credit: Getty Images

Subsequently, Pucovski was advised against playing by a medical panel – comprising representatives from CA, CV and independent experts – that convened after he was struck on the helmet by a delivery from Tasmania’s Riley Meredith.

But the panel stopped short of forcing Pucovski to retire, due to the legal and insurance implications of doing so. As a consequence, Pucovski will not confirm his intentions to CV or in public until he can exit on what he sees as fair and reasonable terms. These would acknowledge the cumulative effect of the concussions he has suffered, and the potential earning power lost due to a medically compelled exit from cricket.

“You feel like he’s been cut short by a decade,” said one source with knowledge of talks, speaking anonymously because negotiations were confidential.

CV said: “Will has all the information to make a decision.”

CA, the ACA and Pucovski's management declined to comment, nor divulge the name of the legal firm representing him.

Picked for Australia at 20 and opening the batting in an SCG Test against India at 22, Pucovski appeared to be headed for a major role in the national cricket team.

David Hookes sustained a fractured jaw in 1977. Credit: The Age

Instead, his brief time in the cricket spotlight may leave a different legacy, by creating a framework for players to be compensated in the event of a forced early retirement from the game through concussion.

Were Pucovski simply to announce that he had retired, he would be entitled to little more than the paying out of his remaining contract, renewed for 12 months by CV earlier this year.

Australian sport has never been subject to workers’ compensation laws, a state of affairs that has existed since the 1970s and the first flowering of athletics pursuits as professions. Cricketers, in fact, donned helmets in part because they dared not risk injuries like the broken jaw that befell the late David Hookes in 1977 thanks to an Andy Roberts bouncer, costing Hookes valuable playing time and match fees from Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket.

In terms of insurance, contemporary Australian players kept out of cricket by injury are eligible for the recompense of up to two years of missed match fees. The match fees stand apart from retainers baked into central contracts and paid irrespective of how many games are played.

The AFL players’ super fund includes a total and permanent disability clause, offering significant payments to those eligible. Players have access to two different insurance policies. The AFLPA’s injury and hardship fund also caters for a career-ending injury payout, for which the age of player and the value of their contract are used to calculate the payout value: the younger the player, the bigger the payout.

Pucovski has also faced mental health struggles, about which he has also been very open.

Pucovski receives his baggy green cap at the SCG in 2021, before his sole Test.Credit: Getty Images

The medical panel that previously cleared Pucovski to play in 2022 concluded in part: “The panel’s overwhelming conclusion was that some of the previous injuries sustained had involved low trauma force and therefore were most likely not true concussion, but a form of either post-traumatic migraine or stress-related response.”

Australian cricket was looking for new heroes during the 2018-19 season in which Pucovski was first called into the Australian Test squad. That was the summer of bans for Steve Smith, David Warner and Cameron Bancroft, for their parts in the sandpaper scandal.

The Test team struggled for runs, and by sculpting 243 against Western Australia in Perth that October, Pucovski vaulted to the front of the queue of top-order aspirants. Not since Doug Walters had a Shield double century been scored by so young an Australian cricketer.

But even within that game, Pucovski was battling with his mental health, and took a break shortly thereafter.

Keep up to date with the best AFL coverage in the country. Sign up for the Real Footy newsletter.