The damning reality of concussion in women’s AFL, as mismanagement within the league is highlighted.
Concussion in AFLW is on the rise. Despite strong efforts to improve tackling techniques and incidents that lead to head knocks, the mismanagement of players is said to be at the forefront.
For as long as we can remember, concussion and head knocks have been spiking in the AFL, leading to the end of promising careers and these players lives as they know it, but it’s now taking over the women’s game.
A careless approach to attacking contests and situations has been attributed to these rises, but it now appears that mismanagement and insufficient protocols in terms of players' recovery time is to blame for long-lasting and devastating effects.
Leading neurologist at Latrobe University, Dr Alan Pearce strongly suggests that it may be due to the management side of handling concussion.
“So, I think how to manage it properly, and that’s where I think we’re getting let down at the moment, we’re not necessarily managing the injury as well as we could,” he said.
The number of matches missed per club in the AFLW due to concussion increased significantly from 0.5 in 2019 to 1.6 in 2020 and continues to rise at scary rates.
Dr Anthea Clarke, a sport and exercise lecturer at Latrobe University believes management in the short term after a concussion is crucial to aiding recovery and allowing players to return to the game in peak health.
“The more stress we put on the brain, the more injuries and load that it has to deal with soon after that initial injury,” she said.
“We’re not allowing the body that recovery time to get back to its original state.”
According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, concussion has been the number one cause of hospitalisations in community football since 2012/13, with more than two thirds of concussions sustained by young footballers aged 10-19.
The staggering statistic highlights a systematic fault in the way concussion is treated and managed, and this is starting to filter through to AFLW and semi-professional competitions.
Lydia Pingel, a former player for Bond University in the QAFL, is someone who has endured countless concussions which drove her out of the game at just 28 years of age.
Pingel admitted that concussion cases are treated poorly for younger athletes and blown off as nothing.
She says she is still suffering terrible effects, two years on from her last match.
“I think being quite a young person too, which shouldn’t matter, it always gets categorised as like you’re young, you’re fit, you’re healthy, like it’ll just go away,” she said.
“So still today, and this was like two years ago, it still has massive effects. I pretty much have a headache every day.
“If not a headache, some sort of pressure in my head.
“I’m not normal, I’m not the same person I was 12 months ago, let alone three years ago or four years ago.”
Pingel is one of the many examples of people in AFLW or aspiring high-level female footballers, to have their dreams shattered due to the duty of care often not meeting required standards.
Pearce believes the 12-day mandatory concussion protocol is not enough and is forcing our women to suffer reoccurrences and devastating symptoms for longer periods of time.
“So, 12 days is a good start, but then again, the emerging research internationally is suggesting that the brain takes closer to 28 to 30 days to recover,” he said.
“(This is) rather than 10 to 12 days. So, we are rushing players back too soon.”
Although there are so many great unknowns about concussion, Pearce believes careers of players can be extended with greater measures, and people’s futures could be better as a result.
“If a player, a young player, would take the extra two weeks or maybe even three weeks, it would give them a potential four to five years extra playing,” he said.
Concussion incidence is rising at a rapid rate in the women’s game and more publicly, AFLW.
According to the 2021 AFLW injury report, there were a recorded 8.27 concussions per 1,000 player hours, which is roughly 8 concussions every 11 games. There were only 4.76 concussions per 1000 player hours in 2020, so the rates have almost doubled in the space of a year.
Dr Anthea Clarkes admits the solution is not as simple as just resting due to the difficult nature of concussions, but there are worrying signs with the symptoms and severity of concussion that our AFLW players are reporting.
“One of those challenging things is that we can’t see that injury and we can’t see the recovery of that injury,” she said.
“We know that female athletes appear to have a greater incidence of concussion. There are a lot more symptoms related to concussion, a larger severity, and the recovery duration is longer in women.”
With better awareness and management, through the AFL’s concussion protocols, you would expect a steep decline. However, data suggests that head injuries are happening more often than they ever have.
As mentioned earlier, concussions doubled from 4 per 1,000 player hours in 2020 to 8 in 2021. The newest protocols were brought in ahead of the 2021 season, bizarrely resulting in high increases in concussion incidence for our women.
It shows the protocols are not working, both in the men and women’s competitions. Pearce says the original protocol was a good starting point but must be lifted to protect our players and their futures.
A six-stage return to play protocol is seen as the future protocol that will benefit our athletes’ health most.
“The graduated return to play protocol is a six-stage protocol increasing in exercise and then followed by on-field drills, non-contact on-field drills, and then contact rules,” Pearce said.
Research done by Pearce shows that the brain can take as long as a month to fully recover, so 12 days or two weeks is seen as a very premature recovery period.
“They (players) can actually start to return to quiet training and not let anyone know that they’re doing contact training drills or anything like that in that 12-day period. Because they’ve been cleared by the doctor”.
If concussion is not handled with the correct awareness and care, there are fears that upon return, players will suffer more frequent and worse hits that may force retirement.
Pingel says that her career was ended by frequent concussions in a short amount of time.
“There wasn’t a big-time lapse between them all. I felt like all the time I was just getting concussed,” she said.
“Between my third and fourth, it was pretty bad. Because the first one happened, I think maybe six months later the second one happened. And then probably six weeks later, another one happened.”
Management and awareness are so important in our great game and need to improve before we drive footballers out of the game.
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