From the Pocket: Outside the AFL, the football community faces different but equally grave dangers

Nathan Fitzgerald was named in the back pocket for the Epping reserves. A teacher, he was looking forward to the second week of school holidays. Early in the morning, he’d watched the Socceroos with his dad and younger brother. He planned to watch Richmond play Carlton on Saturday night. He’d recently proposed to his long-term girlfriend.

There has been big money and high-profile signings in the Northern Football Netball League over the years, but not in the third division and certainly not in the reserves. Almost all of Epping’s players live and work locally, and played their junior football at the club. Mernda Central College, where “Mr Fitz” taught maths and science, has nearly 1,800 students from prep to year 12. Some of those students were at Lalor Recreation Reserve watching their teacher play. They saw the umpires inspect the ground. They saw the away team establish a nine-goal lead. They saw the initial clash of heads. They saw Nathan’s head then hit another player’s leg, before smashing into the “multilayered synthetic surface” that covers a concrete cricket pitch.

Much has been made of this concrete pitch. Neurophysiologist Prof Alan Pearce said “common sense would tell you that this was an accident waiting to happen. There is no give in a concrete structure, so there is no absorption for the brain.” Former player-manager turned campaigner Peter Jess, who calls the AFL “a concussion factory”, has called on the league to conduct annual safety checks of grounds used in all levels of the sport. He says it’s unacceptable that lower levels of football are subject to different safety standards than the top tier. This, mind you, is a league that still can’t ascertain what is and isn’t a goal. To expect them to enforce universal safety protocols and ensure professional-like conditions across tens of thousands of ovals for junior, men’s, women’s and seniors games every week is a stretch.

Similar discussions of risk and blame were raised after the death of 17-year-old Ben Austin, who was struck in the head at cricket training in Melbourne last October, and later died. Cricket is a sport loaded with risk. You’re at the mercy of the toss, the weather, the turf, the equipment, the bowler and the ball. All cricketers navigate similar dangers – whether they’re facing Mitchell Starc at Lord’s or in the nets in Melbourne’s suburbs. Ben’s dad, wearing his late son’s club cap, spoke of this a few days later. “It wasn’t the game’s fault,” he said.

A footballer faces very different dangers to a cricketer, and a reserves footballer in the suburbs faces very different dangers to a professional in the AFL. League footballers play on well-curated turf, under the control of four umpires, and with the support of an incredibly strong players’ union. But the bodies are getting bigger, the game is getting faster, the hits are getting harder and obtaining insurance is increasingly difficult.

The risks in local football are different, and vary according to the standard of play and umpiring, the quality and availability of ovals, and the access to medical help. They are compounded at clubs that operate on a shoestring, in municipalities where population growth is booming and where oval space is scarce. Local players will tell you that a covered concrete pitch is not particularly unusual, and no more dangerous than uneven surfaces, grounds that double as dog parks, turf wickets that have become rock hard, or fences that are too close to the boundary line. Most who have played contact sport have stories of tragedies, of freak accidents, of near misses, of split seconds where the players are like flies to wanton boys. Two years ago, Michael Pisker, a player in Melbourne’s premier amateur division, was kneed in the eye socket, and suffered catastrophic injuries to his face, skull and brain. He spent a fortnight in a coma and lost an eye.

It’s natural in circumstances like this to want to blame someone or something – the tackler, the AFL, the local council, even the sport itself. What’s harder to grapple with is the inherent risk that comes with playing such a sport, a risk that every participating adult understands. This is how the tragedy of Nathan’s death differs from the tragedies of CTE. The great shame of CTE is that players and parents didn’t know the risks. They weren’t educated on the dangers. The governing body listened to the wrong people.

Nathan Fitzgerald’s death was something else altogether. It was a reminder – in a sport that’s marketed as a rollicking ride, that’s measured in terms of eyeballs and bums on seats, that’s administered like a mid-tier law firm and that’s analysed like it’s a puzzle to be solved – that it’s still an inherently dangerous sport. It was a reminder that there’s a whole footballing community outside the AFL, a community that generates the same passions and that’s subject to different but equally grave dangers as the pros. Every week, nearly 700,000 Australians play footy for their clubs and their schools. On the weekend, one of them didn’t come home.

Click here to read article