Taking the Hits Without Protection: AFL Players and the Struggle for Concussion Coverage
This weekend, Australian Jews will be celebrating yontef. They will gather with family and friends, eat, drink and say lekhayim. Houses are being cleaned and shopping is being done as I write this. Yes, yontef will be upon us this Saturday. It’s Grand Final Day!
At a recent Bund Yom Kiper program I attended, someone compared Yom Kiper to the Australian Football League’s Grand Final. It is the culmination of a year’s work. The make-or-break day. The big one. One might even say the holiest of holies.
This comparison is hardly surprising. Sport, and AFL football in particular, is an almost religious experience in Australia. Before babies have learned to speak, they have already been signed up as members of the family footy club of choice. Migrants don’t need to speak English to be accepted – they just need a favourite footy team.
In fact, the Bund’s own Bono Wiener was one of those migrants. The story goes that, while travelling on a train one day, Bono happened upon a working-class man crying. Naturally, he went over and asked the man what was wrong. The man replied that Collingwood Football Club had lost. At that moment, Bono decided that anything that could make a working man cry like that deserved his support. So began a lifelong devotion to the Pies.
Yes, yontef is here, and Aussies will be glued to their televisions or, if they are lucky enough, will train to shul – the MCG, that is – to celebrate our great game.
However, I can probably count on one hand the number of unionists who will spend Sunday thinking about how the players they are watching are being screwed over by big corporations.
My own awareness of this issue began in 2023, when Melbourne Football Club player Angus Brayshaw was severely concussed following a collision with Collingwood player Brayden Maynard. The injury ultimately contributed to Brayshaw’s medical retirement in 2024.
Following this career-ending injury, Brayshaw, like any other worker injured in the workplace, made an insurance claim. It seemed like a no-brainer. A worker is insured through their workplace. A worker is injured at work. A worker makes an insurance claim. A worker receives insurance cover for that injury.
Except that Brayshaw’s claim to Zurich Insurance was denied.
Zurich has been a sponsor of the Melbourne Football Club for some time. It has backed the men’s team since 2018 and the women’s team since 2020. It is a more than 100-year-old, well-established international insurance company. It was also selected as the insurer for the AFL Players Association’s superannuation fund’s group insurance, with AMP as trustee.
The AFLPA is, in effect, the union representing AFL and AFLW players and advocating for the interests of its members.
Simply put, Zurich is heavily invested in the business of football – and football injuries.
Insurance might sound like a technical financial issue. However, for a worker who suffers a career-ending injury, insurance can mean the difference between financial security and an uncertain future.
This is not an abstract issue.
Angus Brayshaw received support from seven different doctors for his insurance claim relating to his head injury. Reporter Tom Morris reported that the only doctor who did not support the claim was the doctor appointed by Zurich.
The reported basis for the denial only led to further head-scratching. According to reporting on the dispute, evidence considered in assessing Brayshaw’s claim included his ability to attend his wedding and deliver a speech at the 2024 Brownlow Medal ceremony. His wife’s father was the late AFL great Danny Frawley, who himself suffered significant consequences from concussion.
Tom Morris described Zurich’s handling of the matter as “one of the greatest injustices in modern football”. How could it be that a premiership player could be denied an insurance claim relating to an injury suffered while playing the sport he was employed to play?
But Brayshaw’s case may have been a canary in the coal mine.
Earlier this year, Zurich Insurance shocked the footy world by excluding brain injuries from the total and permanent disability coverage provided to AFL and AFLW players through their superannuation arrangement.
The change came after the trustee, AMP, requested a revised proposal for the provision of insurance. Zurich subsequently stated that “the trustee [AMP], in consultation with the AFLPA, determined Zurich’s proposal was the most appropriate when compared with other available market offerings”.
Consequently, from 1 May this year, brain injuries were excluded from TPD claims under this particular group insurance coverage.
Following the public backlash, the Melbourne Football Club chose not to pursue a renewal of its Zurich sponsorship beyond 2026. After all, the apparent contradiction between a company whose slogan is “protecting those you truly love” and the dispute over insurance coverage for a severe workplace injury was a step too far for many fans and players.
But the problem goes beyond one club, one player or one insurance company.
More than 500 professional players, men and women, are affected by changes to this insurance arrangement. They continue to put their bodies – and, potentially, their long-term health – on the line each week.
It is important to note that the AFL and AFLPA Severe Injury Benefit is not insurance coverage. It is part of an injury and support fund with its own eligibility requirements. The existence of that fund does not resolve the broader question of whether professional footballers have adequate protection against the long-term consequences of serious injury, particularly brain injury.
That raises some fundamental questions.
Where is the AFLPA’s voice on this issue? It is the union representing these players. Surely this is precisely the kind of fundamental issue affecting its membership on which a union should be organising and advocating.
Where is the collective bargaining power when it comes to brain injuries?
Where is the demand for adequate insurance?
Where is the insistence that the cost of the risks inherent in professional football cannot simply be transferred onto individual players?
Where is the AFL’s responsibility to ensure that the people whose labour creates its enormous commercial success are properly protected?
Then there is the question for us footy fans – many of us financial members of these football clubs. What are we going to say or do? Will we place pressure on clubs and insurance companies like Zurich to live up to the responsibility that comes with protecting the players we love?
These are questions worth asking before it is too late.
Today, I hope we all enjoy the excitement, camaraderie and passion that footy brings. I hope the concussion rule isn’t needed and that no stretcher is brought onto the field.
As we watch the best footballers in the country compete for a Premiership, we must also remember what happens when the game is over – and when the cheering stops.
