AFL player agent and concussion campaigner Peter Jess has slammed a Victorian AFL club that has struck a secret deal requiring a player who has suffered multiple concussions to assume all legal responsibility for any further on-field brain trauma.
In Code Sports, a report revealed an AFL club had washed its hands with one player regarding future brain injuries.
Jess, who was the first AFL player agent in 1980, has been working in sports management and personal representation under the banner of Athletica Sports Management and has been an advocate for greater care around concussion, said it was an "awfully cynical move" of the league's powerbrokers to make.
It's understood the AFLPA was unaware of the secret deal.
"The first thing you have to look at is the damage to the player's brain," Jess said on 3AW.
"Because we have 68 points of cerebral functionality that drive the aspects of his life. If we know what part that controls the executive function, that is the decision-making process- if it's been damaged, I'm pretty convinced that there'll be no informed consent.
"So he actually doesn't know what he's signing into.
“It's an awfully cynical move by the AFL to blame shift … the environment this player is going into is dangerous; the responsibility for the employer is to protect the player from any harm.
"The science and medicine have said if you've had three clinical concussions, you should not be put in a position to get a fourth because of the long-term damage. Quite simply, what I'm seeing, of the cohort of past players that I have worked with, two of my past players have died, and they've died from CTE. The whole situation is that if it was better managed at a point in time, and we knew what the brain damage was, then you could actually work and rehabilitate.
"It gets to a point where, if you ignore brain damage, you put a person to get more brain damage, then for me, that is a breach of the human rights of this player."
Jess has turned his focus to the welfare of past players by seeking justice who have been let down by the AFL's handling of concussion.
His work has led to numerous game-day concussion protocols and an increase in mandatory days off between matches following a head knock.
Multiple players have been medically retired from the AFL in the past few years, headed by Melbourne premiership player Angus Brayshaw.
Nathan Murphy, Jeremy McGovern and Aiden O'Driscoll also had their careers cut short.
