A NUMBER of former players could be eligible to receive payments of up to $600,000 as part of a new ‘Severe Injury Benefit’ written into the updated AFL and AFLW Players’ Injury and Support Fund.
The AFLPA wrote to its members on Tuesday to outline the details of the new fund allocations, which more than doubled as part of the most recent Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) to $54 million.
The most significant addition is the ‘Severe Injury Benefit’ payments, which are eligible to players who have suffered cognitive and bodily injuries that have reduced their earning capacity by 40 per cent or more.
The AFL and AFLPA are in the processing of engaging an independent third party organisation, who will in turn be charged with appointing relevant experts, to determine the merits of applications for the payments.
A host of players – including Melbourne’s Angus Brayshaw, the Western Bulldogs’ Aiden O’Driscoll, Adelaide’s Paul Seedsman and Collingwood’s Nathan Murphy and Josh Carmichael – are among those to have been forced into medical retirement recently due to respective concussion issues.
“We’re trying to provide a really significant benefit for someone who is permanently and significantly injured from playing football. Obviously, that includes AFL and AFLW,” outgoing AFLPA chief executive Paul Marsh said.
“This is going to be administered by a third party and it will kick off from July. There will be some complexity to these claims, we have no doubt. Players are going to come to us and we’re going to need them to go through a formal process.
“Really, it’s going to focus on cognitive and bodily function and an impairment around those things. It’s got to be a football-related (injury).
“The test will be, do the experts that we’re working with here think that the player’s had their earning capacity reduced by 40 per cent or more? That will be a challenging test as they work through that. But this is not dissimilar to what you would see in Work Cover or other compensation-type schemes.”
As part of the previous Injury and Hardship Fund, former players have also been eligible to receive payments of up to $500,000 should they have sustained a football-ending injury during their playing career.
The new ‘Severe Injury Benefit’ will be in addition to the existing ‘Football-Ending Injury Benefit’ payments, which remain as part of the new agreement, but is now more relevant to reduced career earnings away from football.
“For both parties, and the AFLPA have been doing incredible work with past players for a long time, but for us to have an enhanced fund with wider eligibility, it’s more support and more funds for more players,” AFL chief executive Andrew Dillon said.
New ‘Dependency Benefit’ payments will also be available as part of the updated fund, which could be eligible to families who were or would have been wholly, mainly or partially dependent on a deceased former player at the time of their death.
The payments, which are also worth up to $600,000, will be subject to the same application process as the ‘Severe Injury Benefit’ model and will also determine if the injury from football contributed to their death.
The updated fund will also include preventative health checks for past players, with testing having started in South Australia during Gather Round. Checks will eventually be held across all states in the coming months.
More than 1200 former players have accessed support as part of the Injury and Hardship Fund, now the Injury and Support Fund, since being written into the previous CBA at the start of 2017.
A total of $24 million was allocated to the fund in the previous CBA, which ran from 2017 to 2022, with those payments more than doubling to $54 million as part of the new agreement signed in September 2023 and lasting through to 2027.
