CTE Is Footy’s Biggest Crisis. The AFL Keeps Whispering.

Twenty-three years old. Let that sit with you for a second. Twenty-three years old, and Nick Lowden became the youngest footballer ever diagnosed with chronic traumatic encephalopathy — CTE — a degenerative brain disease that has no cure, no treatment, and can only be confirmed after death.

Monday night’s ABC Four Corners episode told Nick’s story, and if you watched it and felt nothing, I’d check your own pulse. I’ve been watching footy my whole life. I love this game with everything I’ve got. And this story genuinely scared me.

What Is CTE and Why Should Every Footy Fan Care?

CTE — chronic traumatic encephalopathy — is a progressive brain condition linked to repeated head trauma. It was first identified in boxers almost a century ago. It’s been found in the brains of NFL players, rugby union stars, soldiers, and victims of domestic violence.

And now it’s being found in Australian footballers.

The disease causes the accumulation of an abnormal protein in the brain. It can lead to memory loss, depression, aggression, impulse control problems, and ultimately dementia. Nick Lowden reportedly asked his mother, “Why am I like this? What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with my brain?”

That question should haunt everyone involved in this sport — from the boardrooms of AFL House right down to the bloke coaching Under 12s on a Saturday morning in Shepparton.

The AFL’s Response Has Been Carefully Crafted to Say Very Little

Every time CTE gets raised — and it doesn’t get raised nearly enough — the AFL trots out the same kind of statement. Measured. Considered. Full of phrases like “we take player welfare seriously” and “ongoing research” and “working closely with medical experts.”

And look, I’m not saying those things are lies. But words without genuine structural change are just words, aren’t they.

We’re talking about an existential threat to teh game. I’ll say that again: existential. If parents across this country start looking at their kids and thinking, “I don’t want them playing contact footy because it might destroy their brain by the time they’re thirty,” we have a problem that no broadcast deal or expansion team can fix.

The AFL’s response to this crisis has been wholly inadequate. That’s not me being a firebrand. That’s just the truth.

This Isn’t Just an AFL Problem — But the AFL Has to Lead

To be fair — and I’ll try to be fair even when it pains me — the AFL isn’t the only sporting code grappling with this. The NFL has been battling CTE research and lawsuits for years. Rugby codes around the world are starting to face similar reckoning. Boxing has known about this for decades and still hasn’t adequately protected its fighters.

But Australian football has a particular responsibility here. This is our game. It’s the most watched sport in Australia. It’s woven into the cultural fabric of this country in a way that rugby or soccer can only dream about. The AFL has more influence over how the sport is played at every level — from the elite competition down to Auskick — than perhaps any other governing body in world sport has over its code.

That influence comes with responsibility. Enormous responsibility. And right now, that responsibility is not being met.

What Definately Needs to Change (And Fast)

I’m not a neuroscientist. I’m a bloke from Melbourne who bleeds black and white and has watched more footy than is probably healthy. But you don’t need a PhD to identify some obvious starting points.

• Mandatory long-term health monitoring for former players. Not optional check-ins. Mandatory, funded, comprehensive monitoring for anyone who played at elite level, with proper resourcing for those who need support.
• Genuine investment in CTE research. Not token grants. Real money. The AFL turns over hundreds of millions of dollars a year. A meaningful research commitment shouldn’t even make a dent.
• Rule changes to reduce head trauma at all levels. This is the hard one. Because some of these changes might affect the spectacle. They might make the game look different. But if the choice is between a slightly different-looking game and players losing their minds at thirty, that’s not actually a hard choice, is it?
• Transparency with the research. Share what you know. Don’t manage the information to protect the brand. Parents and players deserve the full picture.
• A proper peak welfare body with independence from the AFL. Not a committee that reports back to the commission. An independent body with genuine authority and genuine resources.

Think About the Players You’ve Loved

I’ve watched Collingwood players throw themselves into contests their whole careers. I’ve cheered every courageous marking contest, every gut-running dive onto a loose ball with boots flying everywhere. I’ve celebrated the bravery like it was something to worship.

And it is brave. Genuinely, genuinely brave.

But how much of that bravery came at a cost that those players — young men making decisions about their bodies before their brains were even fully developed — couldn’t have understood or consented to?

That question keeps me up at night more than any Tribunal result or ladder position. And that’s coming from a bloke whose club has been at the centre of a few Tribunal conversations over the years, let me tell you.

Carn the Pies, always. But some things are bigger than footy.

The Families Carry This Alone

One of the most gut-wrenching parts of Nick Lowden’s story — and of every CTE story that has come before it — is how isolated the families feel. They watch someone they love change in ways that are terrifying and incomprehensible. They ask questions and get few answers. They grieve someone who is still alive.

And then, far too often, they have to fight to even get the diagnosis confirmed, because CTE can currently only be diagnosed post-mortem. They have to donate their loved one’s brain to research. They have to relive the worst period of their lives in the hope that it helps someone else.

These families are doing more to protect future players than most administrators. They deserve to be heard, properly resourced and not just thanked in a press release.

This Game Is Worth Fighting For — Which Is Why We Can’t Stay Quiet

I want Australian football to exist in a hundred years. I want my grandkids to watch a grand final and feel the same electricity I felt watching the Pies in September. I want this game to grow and thrive and keep meaning something to millions of Australians.

But none of that is possible if we stick our heads in the sand about CTE. The game cannot survive the reputational and ethical consequences of knowingly exposing players to this risk without doing everything in its power to understand, mitigate and disclose it.

The AFL needs to stop whispering about this and start shouting. It needs to stop managing the narrative and start genuinely managing the problem. It needs to look the families of Nick Lowden and every other affected player in the eye and say not just “we’re sorry” but “here is what we are changing, here is what we are funding, and here is how we are going to make this right.”

Measured responses to existential threats aren’t leadership. They’re the appearance of leadership.

And this game deserves better than that.