The 21-day concussion rule, which now applies to community football (outside of the professional ranks of the AFL and AFLW), may see helmets in vogue again as footballers try to avoid missing multiple weeks if diagnosed with head trauma.
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Rohan Aldous spoke to three former football greats who were regular “helmet heads”, who shared their insight into the new rule.
The defender
Simon Fiske, 55
“Built like a brick outhouse” is a term befitting the stature of the renowned hardman, who was a premiership player with Girgarre and Kyabram.
Fiske was a broad-shouldered “man-child” during his formative football years and wore a helmet from the time he joined Kyabram’s Under-18 ranks until he ended his career at Girgarre in the Kyabram District League.
“I started wearing the helmet when I went to play with Ky thirds. Mum wanted me to wear the helmet and when she got Dad on side there was no turning back,” Fiske said.
Fiske became so used to the match-day accessory that he played both his seasons at Kyabram and all his senior football at Girgarre and Stanhope in the helmet.
“I was a big kid in the Stanhope Under-16 team, not tall, but thick set. They used to play me in the ruck to put the opposition ruckman off,” he said.
“And I could jump a bit back then.’’
While extremely aggressive toward the football in those early days he never suffered a concussion.
He remembers being virtually the only one wearing a helmet when he joined the Goulburn Valley under-age ranks.
He did suggest his parents may have been thinking about protecting others, rather than their son, when they insisted he wear the helmet on his arrival in the league.
Fiske was a straight-running/hard-hitting half-back and was captain of the Kyabram thirds for much of the 1986 season — having been a member of its 1985 grand final-winning side.
The former St Augustine’s College student was referred to as Ram-man (fans of the 1980s cartoon will understand the reference) by some teammates in his early on-field days.
Fiske suffered only one concussion while playing his 14 senior and two under-age seasons.
“Not sure how he did it, but Peter Googin from Tallygaroopna caught me with an elbow once,” he said.
Fiske only ever had two helmets, replacing his favourite predominately grey (with a pair of red bands) helmet with a new one late in his career.
Fiske said he did remember at Kyabram and Girgarre (where he played in the 1991 premiership) teammate Wally Charles occasionally playing with a helmet.
Generally, though, he was the only player on the ground with protective headwear.
And given his broad shoulders and aggressive on-field demeanour, there were rarely taunts from opposition players and no-one ever tried to pull it off.
Nowadays Fiske is a renowned maker of furniture using re-purposed 44-gallon drums.
AFL Community Concussion Guidelines
A document providing a step-by-step approach to the management of concussion injuries is now available for community clubs.
The AFL Community Concussion Guidelines (along with other supporting resources) are available here: https://play.afl/lear.../afl-community-concussion-guidelines
Included in the guidelines are five sections – day of injury management, return to play protocols, videos and testimonials, coaching and skill development, along with a concussion education course.
Of particular interest in the guidelines is:
– Clubs should refer a player that may have suffered a concussion or injury to their brain to a medical doctor for assessment.
– There is no evidence that currently available soft-shell headgear reduces the risk of concussion or other brain injuries in Australian Football.
– A Medical Clearance Form (return to play) requiring the signature of the player and a medical practitioner prior to returning to play.
– The earliest that a player may return to play (once they have completed a graded loading program and have obtained medical clearance) is on the 21st day following the concussion (where the day of concussion is designated day “0”)
The mid-fielder
Adam Brunt, 48
If the 21-day concussion rule had existed when Adam Brunt was playing country football, it would have severely impacted what ended up being a highly decorated and celebrated career.
Brunt admitted that he would have spent a lot of time on the sidelines if having to be medically assessed for concussion was required during his playing days — 1992 to 2013.
“I know I had some concussions, but played the next week. It probably wasn’t until right at the end of my career that the issue really came up,” he said.
“I would have missed a lot of footy if the rule applied back then.”
Not only is Brunt a Goulburn Valley League best and fairest winner, one of less than a handful to win the Morrison Medal from the Tongala club, but he also won back-to-back medals (the Pearce Medal) in the Picola league.
Brunt still lives in Tongala, where he played all his junior football, recalling that he discarded the helmet when he started playing senior football because he thought it would present a target to opponents.
“I was a small kid and wore a helmet for all of my junior football. It wasn’t until 2011 that I wore it for the first time at senior level,” he said.
Brunt, who joined Lancaster in the Kyabram District League in 2010, suffered a couple of bad concussions during the 2011 season.
He, coach Paul Barnett, and the club decided that the best course of action would be to wear a helmet for the last half of the year after it became obvious his fearless attack on the football and high profile in the league was making him a target for opposition players.
“It was late in my career, I was fairly slow and copped a few knocks,” Brunt said.
“Because I wore it the whole time as a junior I didn’t find it that much of a big deal.”
Ironically, it could have been concussion that robbed Brunt of his only senior football grand final — and premiership.
Concerns for his health and safety were allayed by him wearing the helmet and he continued on to become a premiership player with the Wombats in 2011.
Brunt played two more years, back at Tongala in the reserves team, after that Lancaster premiership and continued to wear the helmet.
He had no other incidents, but the Blues reserves lost two grand finals.
Brunt was the 1998 Morrison medallist, six seasons after he made his senior debut with Tongala as a 16-year-old, and a year after the Blues had lost the GVL grand final to Seymour.
His back-to-back Picola league best-and-fairest awards were in 2005-06 and he finished with four Tongala best and fairest awards.
The goal sneak
Freddo McMahon, 82
A perforated ear drum and the advice of a trusted medico encouraged the Goulburn Valley League’s first 300-game player to spend the last half of his career wearing a helmet.
“I knew about concussion, but it was the ear injury that forced me to wear a helmet,” Tatura legend Freddo McMahon said.
“I was playing at Stanhope when I copped one in the ear. I think the helmet helped me a bit after that when it came to head knocks.”
McMahon had the helmet (which he still keeps in his possession at his Tatura home) especially made by a Shepparton tradesman.
“It was made of 3/4-inch rubber and covered a lot of my forehead, but after a few games I didn’t even know I was wearing it,” he said.
He wore it for almost a decade, as one of only two players he could recall who regularly donned head protection.
“The only other bloke I came across, in my time, was Graham Cross from Shepparton,” McMahon said.
“It was quite unique actually, he played in the centre and we lined up on one another one day.”
Being a cheeky rover and goal sneak McMahon regularly attracted the attention of opposition “hard men”, but before the helmet said he just had a whiff of smelling salts and got on with it.
“The trainer would run out with a towel over their shoulder, give your face a wipe and off you would go again,” he said.
McMahon played with Tatura from 1958 until 1976, but has had a life-long connection to football as a Victorian Country Football League director, a GVL board member and in several other capacities.
He was also heavily involved with junior football, recalling the time clubs were offered a subsidy by the “big league” to fit their junior footballers out in helmets.
“Some clubs took up the offer and some didn’t. At certain clubs players weren’t allowed to take the ground without a helmet,” he said.
McMahon was the first player in the GVL to reach 300 games
He joined the Tatura junior ranks in 1953 as a cheeky, confident rover who was Tatura through and through.
He won a Shepparton Junior Football League best and fairest and played his first senior game for Tatura in 1958, under the great Keith Warburton.
He trialled with both Collingwood and Melbourne and represented the GVL on 11 occasions, winning the 1966 GVL goalkicking title.
The case for and against
There are a number of reasons why footballers resist wearing a helmet: it isn’t mandatory, cost, discomfort, weight, bulk, aesthetics, impeding temperature regulation, vision or hearing, or it may become “target” for the opposition players.
It is also considered somewhat of a “false economy” for players, some choosing to engage in more dangerous activities because of the belief that the helmet may protest them from increasing their risk of injury.
Last month, the AFL released updated guidelines on the Management of Sport-Related Concussion in Australian Football at all levels of the game outside AFL and AFLW.
This is the new rule: “the earliest that a player may return to play (once they have completed a graded loading program and have obtained medical clearance) is on the 2st day following the concussion (where the day of concussion is designated day ‘0’).“
That means a player concussed in a Saturday game would miss the next two games.
Following the 21-day concussion announcement, suggestions that all players involved in the sport would be required to wear helmets were shut down quickly by AFL chief executive Andrew Dillon.
Those reports did not advance far past the rumour stage, although the debate on the use of helmets has been simmering in the background since the early 2000s.
A study in 2011 found that only one of the seven helmets tested was likely to reduce the risk of head injury and this was the helmet had the thickest padding and foam density.
Based on the laboratory results, most padded helmets were not thick enough or firm enough to significantly reduce injury risk, but one was adequate.
This result was promising but laboratory-based findings provide low-level evidence as to the effectiveness in actually reducing the sport injury rate.
There have been no controlled, long-term studies comparing the injury rates of football players wearing helmets with those not wearing helmets.
AFL class action
Two of the highest-profile concussion lawsuits, led by former Geelong player Max Rooke and the widow of Shane Tuck, have merged and will now be brought as a single class action against the AFL.
Tuck played with four clubs — Richmond, Adelaide, Port Adelaide and Hawthorn — and died in July 2020, seven years after he retired from the AFL.
Rooke played 135 games with Geelong, including a pair of premierships, and is the lead plaintiff in the action, which takes in people who played for AFL clubs since 1985.
The South Australian-based lawyer representing Rooke, Tuck’s widow Katherine, and many other players has told his clients the liability laid with the league, not the clubs.
His explanation for directing the claim against the league, and not the clubs, is that he considered the AFL the body “solely responsible for creating, implementing and overseeing” the game’s rules and regulations.
More cases are being lodged, the latest former Western Bulldogs player Nigel Kellett, who is battling dementia and suspected CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy — a brain disorder caused by repeated head injuries, often in contact sports or military combat).
Kellett finds it difficult to speak fluently and is also suffering from Parkinson’s disease.
He revealed his story in the same week as the AFL-endorsed Danny Frawley match for mental health.
The AFL has set aside more than $50 million for players suffering the effects of concussions and other football-related injuries.
It has more than doubled its funding for the injury hardship fund in the new collective bargaining agreement, to $54 million over five seasons, compared with $24 million in the previous six-year term from 2017-22.
Kyabram Free Press and Campaspe Valley News editor