Triple premiership Lion Jonathan Brown has urged the AFL community and external medical commentators to not rush Swans defender Paddy McCartin into a call on his footy future.
It comes as McCartin’s latest concussion prompted Brown to reflect on the end to his own AFL career, saying he “lost the fight” to prove he could continue playing after another head knock.
McCartin and the Swans are essentially in the hands of the same medical experts who ticked off the defender’s return to football three and half years ago as he considers whether a return to football is possible – and whether he wants to return to the field.
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The 26-year-old on Saturday night was subbed out of the Swans’ close loss to Port Adelaide after his head collided with the SCG turf in an innocuous incident.
McCartin suffered eight concussions across five seasons at St Kilda before being delisted by the club as he dealt with complications from repeated head trauma. His return to footy, firstly via the Swans’ VFL team then their AFL team in 2022, to play alongside his brother has been one of the competition’s feel-good stories.
But Herald Sun journalist Jon Ralph reported on Fox Footy’s On The Couch that a decision on McCartin’s playing future was “weeks, maybe even months into the future”.
Experts to assess McCartin’s AFL future | 01:06
“Paddy reported into Sydney‘s football headquarters (on Monday). He was symptomatic, he had some headaches, but certainly none of the issues we saw through the end of his St Kilda time – that sensitivity to light, inability to cope in public situations,” Ralph reported on Fox Footy on Monday night.
“So Sydney and McCartin‘s view is that they don’t want to play it out in public … But they feel the only people that matter here are the people who are the experts who greenlit his return. They’re the people that they will go back to, to review the case, to review the incident of a really confronting scene.
“It may well be that those people tell him ‘Paddy, we don‘t think you can play again’ – and then he’s got a big decision to make. So those hand-picked bunch of experts are AFL medical boss Michael Makdissi and neurologist Owen White. The AFL considers them to be the best of the best.”
McCartin’s latest head knock comes after a class action, involving up to 60 former players, against the AFL as a result of concussion and negligence was launched at the Supreme Court in Melbourne last month.
Collingwood legend Nathan Buckley pointed out the concussion landscape had changed significantly since McCartin’s return to footy ahead of the 2021 VFL season had been ticked off.
But Brown said a call on an AFL player’s career shouldn’t necessarily be made “because we‘re worried about being liable”.
“At the end of the day, there‘s a benchmark for whether a player is healthy or not – or whether he’s cleared to play – and if Paddy wants to play, chase his passion and go through and jump all the hoops again, and he passes all those tests, why isn’t he allowed the freedom to play if that’s what want he wants to do?” Brown asked on Fox Footy’s On The Couch.
A series of worrying head knocks and concussions ultimately ended Brown’s career. He was effectively forced to retire midway through 2014 after another collision with Tom Bugg during a Lions-Giants game, despite the knock appearing to not be as severe as others he’d suffered.
“It brings back bad memories, because my last hit wasn‘t a big one and I was like Paddy afterwards. I had people around me including ‘Vossy’ (Michael Voss), ‘Leppa’ (Justin Leppitsch), Leigh (Matthews) and, ultimately, my doctors who said ‘we’re not going to clear you’,” Brown said.
“I could’ve fought them, but I was 33 years old. I’d lost the fight to go through this two-year process – or however long it was going to take – to try and prove that I was going to be capable of playing.
“Paddy is at a different stage of his career. So I think we‘ve got to be careful about rushing to judgment, saying: ‘Paddy, you’ve got to retire for the good of yourself and the good of your family.’ You’ve got to allow him the time to jump through the hoops and discuss with the AFL.”
Five-time All-Australian Garry Lyon – a family friend of McCartin – again warned against anyone trying to forecast or declare McCartin’s future other than McCartin himself along with his family, friends and support network.
Lyon: ‘Lets not race to retire McCartin’ | 00:46
“I‘m close to it, protective of course, and I got a bit frustrated there appeared to have been a race to see who can make the most damning statement about his retirement … I don’t think it needs to be a race to retire him,” Lyon told On The Couch.
“Arguably, there‘s no one in footy who has done more on this than himself. He took himself to Chicago, spent a week there – he’s done so much.
“He‘s not reckless, he’s not someone who’s pushing the boundary on his own and going against all the good (advice). In his own mind, he was right to play. Had the information come from the doctors that said ‘you’re not’, he would have retired.
Lyon pointed to an interview he’d conducted with McCartin in 2022 for Fox Footy’s Face To Face program, in which McCartin revealed he wouldn’t have returned to the field if medical experts had said he was at risk of more, or worse, concussions.
“Footy is important to me, but it‘s not as important to me as never going back to what happened at that time,” McCartin said.
“That was the only reason I said I would come back. (Girlfriend) Luce and I went into that meeting and I said to her: ‘If they say to me that I‘m at a greater risk and that there’s a one per cent chance that if I play again I could get back to this, I’m going to pull the pin.’”
Former AFL concussion researcher and neurologist Alan Pearce, however, said a recent Oxford University study indicated the more concussions one suffered, the more damage was caused.
“We have good evidence the history of concussion gives you more susceptibility to sustaining concussions and those concussions don’t require much force,” Pearce told the Herald Sun on Monday.
“We have known that for over 10 years.”
AFL 360 co-host Gerard Whateley said a “reckoning” loomed for the AFL and that McCartin would be an “international case study”.
“I think 15 years ago, players used to get sent back out on the field under the standard medical advice at the time. In 15 years’ time, I have no doubt there‘ll be a mandated threshold around the number of career concussions any athlete can have in a contact sport,” Whateley told Fox Footy’s AFL 360. “We’re not there yet. We’re in the middle ground and I think this case study will play a really big role in where we end up in a generation’s time.
“The one thing I won‘t have in this debate is the suggestion that Paddy should sign a waiver. No, no, no – we can’t as an industry abdicate responsibility. Those who run the game, those who stage the game, those who watch and enjoy the game, we can’t abdicate our responsibility and get Paddy to sign his life away in the future. I think that’s a preposterous idea to be put forward.
“But if he chooses to submit himself to play and he gets the surety that he‘s looking for, there will need to be an independent level of industry scrutiny over that. We have seen this before – (premiership Eagle) Daniel Venables’ career was brought to a close by that sort of panel.
“I think that we will have to make that cool, calm, detached assessment, should he present himself back to play.
“I don’t the ‘how’, but I do know that‘s what has to happen – and it will happen in future. This will be an international case study. ‘This is what it looks like in a contact sport to have a man suffer his 10th concussion in full view and the actions that come in the aftermath.’ It’ll have ramifications for a long time. Principally, it’s what happens to Paddy, because what we don’t know is in 20 years’ time what does all this mean for his life?”
