John Barnes pushing to sue AFL over concussion

It’s probably not in the AFL’s favour that the CDC were discussing this in the late 1990’s, and acknowledged the potential link. (see citation below)

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Sports-related recurrent brain injuries—United States. MMWR 1997;46(10):224–227

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The suing comes because the insurance claims was rejected. Not just because.

Oh. I thought it was just because.

But yes, the insurance stuff makes sense.

I just never understand insurance companies. Very little makes sense and they are never consistent, and at the end of the day, we all pay for their actions with our premiums.

I would actually pay more to go to the Footy if I knew that it was going to a fund to support players health. Yep, most players do get good money while they play, but it is a very short time and there are some former Bombers who cannot work or have limited work opportunities. Other ex-Players are very aware of this and when you get the chance to be in a group of ex-Players they often mention the problems their ex-Premiership buddies are in.

And to give credit to the AFLPA, they are much better at all this now than ever before, but many of these ex-Players are too proud to ask for anything. Some of our past heroes make it their business to check up on some of their mates regularly, but I have heard them say how tough it is to actually have help accepted at times. Not saying this is all related to concussion and I know nothing about it, but after watching that Movie, it is all very possible.

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It can be very hard to ask for help. Kudos to Barnes for doing so- I hope he gets the help he needs

Hence why I hate when stupid supporters criticise players who move clubs for extra money. Football is short term, it can alsp limit your means of earning more money for the rest of your life, so you should make it whilst it’s on offer.

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Ok, a little background on differences in Victoria versus the USA, and the NFL situation. The USA is a fault based system. As in, if you get injured at work and its your fault, tough luck. So a key element revolving around the NFL was proving fault, and more specifically proving that they knew. And the results were that they had been sitting on a load of research which showed that concussions did damage for years and suppressed it. Hence, very large payouts when they got sued.

In Victoria, all workplace cover is through WorkSafe Victoria, which is a “no-fault” system. i.e. everyone gets covered regardless of if they were at fault or not. You get medical care, limited economic loss, and a lump sum for pain & suffering and general damages, with the lump sum being based on your level of impairment and only applying to severely injured workers. *However, the cause must be workplace related. *

IF you are seriously injured AND the employer was at fault, you can sue for a larger lump sum. In this case WorkSafe Victoria as the insurer will be the one defending (or settling) the case.

One other US/Australian difference, is that in the US contracts are with NFL clubs, here all contracts are with the AFL.

So, recognising I don’t have any details on this case, or what the AFL did/didn’t know. Barnes would have a valid claim for any medical costs and potentially impacts to his ability to earn money if he can show that the cause is a workplace injury. WorkSafe Victoria would have the right to contest if it was workplace related if there was evidence it wasn’t. Barnes might also be able to sue for the larger lump sum if he’s seriously injured AND he can show the AFL was at fault.

A caveat for everything: sports-people might have special rules about injuries, since I’m pretty sure WorkSafe Victoria doesn’t cover your ACL injury or associated professional sports people’s injuries. That may change all the above.

As I mentioned above, if you’re injured in the workplace in Victoria, fault doesn’t actually matter. If your doing a dangerous job, you’re still covered by WorkSafe Victoria (e.g. abattoirs).

Do you have any examples? Because the McDonald’s coffee example was not such an example. Unless you consider keeping your coffee at a temperature that will cause third degree burns, that you knew had caused such burns, and not doing anything about it acceptable behaviour.

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Sheila Dingus has done some valuable commentary on the NFL, including the apparent duplicity of the NFLPA.
She is on twitter, you can pick up he writings from that.
On the broader aspects of neglidence ( if it is a relevant issue here) don’t forget thalidomide.

Is she the wife of our very own @dingus ? :slight_smile:

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Dingus not a woman?
BTW it is Shiella Dingus ( damned auto correct)
NHL appears to be handling the issue better than NFL. Seems that, unlike most other major US leagues, NFL only provides cover for five years post retirement.

Will probably come down to what the AFL knew and when and what they did with the information.

Perhaps it will cause some kind of James Hardie type fund whereby the AFL contributes a bag of cash over a few years to a fund which then looks after affected players. On no admissions of guilt of course.

I doubt this will even make it near a court room.

I have long thought helmets should be compulsory.
I know, I know, cue all the posts about research showing helmets do not prevent concussion. But why then is it compulsory to wear a helmet when riding a motorbike? Is it not recognised that it protects the head to some extent? Why do NFL players wear helmets?

Secondly, there needs to be more research into how a helmet can do a better job of preventing the jarring of the brain against the skull in the event of sudden impact. For example, some form of “bubble wrap like” cushioning that allows the point of impact to be cushioned, in the same way that an air bag cushions the impact in a car crash by interposing itself between the body and the point of impact.

Dont think actual hard Helmets would, or in fact do, do anything at all, …as evidenced by the NFL problems, … it’s all about the brain shaking inside the skull.

I’ve wondered if there’s a really good shock absorbent rubber for a soft one now that might help take a bit of that shake out

There’s been big advances in rubber etc along those lines in the past decade.

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Gridiron helmets have high density foam padding AND a blow up bladder inside them.

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The issue with sports vs. helmets in other situations is around the humans behave. You put a helmet on someone who is on a motorbike/bike/skateboard etc., the intention is still not to have the collision. It reduces the chances of injury in the rare situation that you do have an accident. The same goes in sports which are non-contact, such as F1 or BMX. You’re trying to avoid collisions.

However, in competitive contact sport the psychology changes. There are a heap of incentives to keep having collisions from a team perspective, and helmets can mean people think they are invulnerable. Hence having repeated, higher speed collisions. The second problem is that helmets reduce the chances of a single major collision causing issues. They’re not really designed to stop repeated knocks (like Gridiron), and they’re not really designed to stop the speed so much of human to human collisions. So on a human to human repeated collision, helmets impact is much more limited, and if it encourages higher speed or more reckless collisions can actually be bad.

A big thing to remember, is helmets aren’t really stopping concussion. They’re stopping much worse things. Especially in cars/bikes with high speeds.

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IMO helmets are more there to stop peoples faces getting ripped off when they hit the asphalt.
Gotta remember the same people who make helmets compulsory are also fine with smoking and alcohol being legal so it’s not all about health/safety.
There are also a few US states where it’s not mandatory (not that it really matters)

This is one study that supports helmet use BUT the injuries are crazy serious (like, 65% became unemployed as a result of the injury serious) and more than 20% of the people who weren’t wearing a helmet were intoxicated or on drugs. That and it also suffers from being an observational study where they only test correlation and not causation

Here are some articles citing research and expert opinion regarding how effective helmets are
Cliffs: handy to stop cuts, scratches etc but will do nothing to stop accumulative effect of small head traumas



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Hmm, I don’t know about the assertion you make re: Observational Studies. The study that established the causative link between smoking and lung cancer was the British Doctors Study, an observational study.

Further, you couldn’t actually do a trial on this. It would be unethical to randomise people to wearing a helmet/no helmet, then hoping they crash. My take on the study is they have controlled for all that they reasonably can. The one thing that may prevent the establishment of causation is temporality of exposure (i.e. wearing a helmet). Do those who don’t wear helmets take greater risks, and are more likely to be involved in a crash that will cause an accident, or vice versa? If so, that could explain the association seen, and not the helmets themselves. That could be hard to assess though, especially when the first point of contact is in the emergency ward with neurological symptoms!

To add to that, i remember watching a doco on it ages ago, where they were finding that collage kids brains were having the same effects as seasoned and retired players who were struggling with the after effects.

Helmets don’t really do anything to stop concussion, because it’s the impact and the jolt that moves the brain around inside the skull, that causes damage.
So in reality players in the afl could never suffer an actual concussion, but that constant high impact jolting body hits could be doing just as much damage, as taking a baseball bat to the head.

NFL players also weare knee pads, shoulder pads etc etc but when you see wr catching a ball and getting crunched from behind and front, you sit there and think, well ■■■■ that ain’t gonna stop it hurting like a ■■■■■■■■■■■■.

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Is this post serious?
You’re not particularly likely to hit your head on concrete, asphalt or concrete on a footy field - which is what helmets are good at protecting from. They’re next to no use at stopping concussions, but for a motorcyclist, you take the concussion over the cracked skull.

A hard helmet would help to protect from contact with knees or arms - at the expense of a lot of knees and arms - but not much else.

What the NFL found was the introduction of hard helmets led to guys using their helmets as weapons which led to more head injuries. Just like the Shane Crawford/Matthew Lloyd armguard, introducing a hard object on the field can have consequences…

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