Kolodjashnij Fronts Up, But the Waiver Question Won’t Die
Two days of guessing games ended on Friday night when Jake Kolodjashnij put his own name to it, and I’ll say this much for the bloke — it takes a fair bit of ticker to stand up in front of the whole competition and say “yep, that was me.” Back in my day nobody signed a thing to keep playing, you just got told to get up and have another go, which in hindsight wasn’t exactly the gold standard either.
Fronting Up When He Didn’t Have To
Let’s give credit where it’s due first, because I’m not here just to grumble for the sake of it, tempting as that is most weeks. Kolodjashnij could have sat back and let the speculation swirl, let some other poor sod cop the guessing, and instead he put out a statement through the Cats defending the club and the process that got him back out on the ground. That’s a stand-up thing to do in a competition where blokes are usually told by the media team to say nothing and let the lawyers sort it out later.
He’s a veteran of that Geelong backline, a bloke who’s given his body to the game for well over a decade, and by all accounts he wanted the speculation to stop landing on teammates who had nothing to do with it. Good on him for that. But fronting up doesn’t mean the story’s finished — if anything it’s just given the whole concussion waiver saga a face, and now the questions get a lot more pointed.
What Exactly Is a Concussion Waiver Anyway
Now I’m an old fella who still calls it the VFL half the time without meaning to, so bear with me while I get my head around this one, because it’s a fair way from footy as I knew it. As I understand the situation, a player with a history of concussion issues signs something waiving his right to sue the club down the track if things go pear-shaped from repeated head knocks. In exchange, presumably, he gets cleared to keep playing the game he loves rather than being told by doctors that his career’s finished.
On one hand you can see the players’ side of it — plenty of blokes would rather take the risk and keep chasing the footy than be forced into retirement by a panel of doctors they’ve never met. On the other hand, you’d want to know awful sure that a fella signing away his legal rights understood exactly what he was signing, and wasn’t just desperate to keep his spot in the seniors. That’s the bit that worries me more than anything Kolodjashnij himself has done.
The Real Question Is Head Office, Not the Player
This is where my grumble properly kicks in, because the story shouldn’t really be about Jake Kolodjashnij at all — it should be about whoever dreamed up a system where a waiver like this becomes necessary in the first place. The AFL has spent years now tinkering with rules, bringing in the medical sub, changing the return-to-play protocols every second season, bringing in independent concussion doctors, and yet here we are with a scandal about players signing away their right to sue their own clubs over head knocks.
You’d want to ask how many other players have signed similar arrangements, and whether the AFL itself sanctioned or encouraged such waivers, because if head office knew this was going on and let it slide quietly in the background while banging on publicly about player welfare being the number one priority, that’s a fair credibility gap right there. It raised eyebrows among plenty of footy people the moment this broke, and rightly so — you can’t have it both ways, spruiking concussion awareness weeks while clubs and players are apparently working out side arrangements to keep blokes on the park.
Geelong’s Position in All This
To be fair to the Cats, and it pains an old Carlton man to say fair things about Geelong two weeks running, Kolodjashnij’s statement was pretty clearly designed to back the club’s process as well as his own decision. He’s basically told the football world that he went in with his eyes open, that Geelong handled it properly, and that he doesn’t want anyone thinking less of the club over it. Whether that satisfies everyone watching from outside is another matter entirely.
Because here’s the thing — a player defending the process doesn’t necessarily mean the process itself was the right one. Plenty of blokes over the years have defended decisions that, with a bit of distance and a few more facts, turned out to be problematic for the game more broadly. I’m not accusing Geelong of anything untoward here, and I want to be dead clear about that, but the AFL competition as a whole needs to look hard at whether these waivers should exist at all, not just whether one club managed the paperwork nicely.
Where This Leaves the Rest of Us
What gets me, and I reckon plenty of old timers watching this unfold feel the same, is that we’re forty-odd years into understanding just how serious repeated head trauma can be for these blokes down the track, and we’re still finding out about waivers and side deals through speculation and leaked stories rather than the league being upfront about its own policies. The concussion class actions overseas in other codes should have been warning enough for the AFL to get properly ahead of this rather than reacting once a story like this one blows up.
I don’t reckon Jake Kolodjashnij deserves to cop it for wanting to keep playing footy — that’s a completely human thing to want, and by all reports he’s still going around at a decent standard for a bloke who’s given plenty of miles to that Geelong backline. What I do reckon deserves scrutiny is the system that put him, or any player, in a position where signing away legal rights felt like the only path back onto the park. Rule tinkerers up at head office love bringing in a new interchange cap or a starting position rule every second year, but on the stuff that actually matters for these young fellas’ long-term health, the response always seems to arrive two steps behind the problem.
Back in my day we didn’t know any better about head knocks, and that’s no excuse, it’s just the truth of it — the excuse runs out the day you do know better and still let it become a legal paperwork exercise instead of a genuine player welfare one. Kolodjashnij’s put his hand up like a stand-up bloke should. Now it’s on the AFL to explain properly why this waiver business exists at all, rather than leaving one veteran defender to carry the whole saga on his own shoulders while everyone else stays conveniantly quiet.
