The AFL Owes Adam Hunter’s Memory More Than Silence

There are letters that get written in grief and anger, and then there are letters that demand to be read. The five-page letter sent to AFL executives and commissioners by the best mate of former West Coast Eagle Adam Hunter — a man who suffered from chronic traumatic encephalopathy — is very much the second kind.

Over here in the west, we’ve followed Adam Hunter’s story with heavy hearts. He was one of ours. He pulled on the blue and gold, he ran out at Subiaco, he gave his body to the game the same way hundreds of blokes before and after him have. And now his best mate is sitting down and writing five pages — five pages — to the people who run the sport, telling them they failed him. That’s not a bloke having a whinge. That’s a man demanding accountability for someone he loved.

What the Letter Is Actually Saying

We don’t need to forensically dissect every line of a private letter to understand what’s at the heart of it. The core allegation — and it’s a serious one — is that the AFL, as the governing body of this sport, failed Adam Hunter. Failed to protect him adequately. Failed, potentially, to acknowledge and respond to what was happening to him. Failed to treat the issue of CTE with the urgency it deserves.

Now, the AFL hasn’t formally responded publicly to the specifics of what’s in that letter at the time of writing this, and in my view they should. And they should do it quickly, and with some genuine humility. Because if the people who run this game think a form letter or a PR statement is going to cut it here, they’re badly mistaken.

CTE Is Not a Fringe Issue Anymore

Let’s be honest about something. For a long time — too long — the conversation around CTE and contact sport was treated like it was being driven by alarmists and ambulance chasers. The AFL, like a lot of major sporting bodies around the world, has been slow to fully grapple with the weight of this evidence. We’ve seen it in the NFL in America, we’ve seen it in rugby league, and we are absolutely seeing it in Australian football.

CTE — chronic traumatic encephalopathy — is a degenerative brain disease. It’s been linked to repeated head trauma. It causes devastating changes in personality, cognition, mood and behaviour. It can only be formally diagnosed after death. And every year, it seems, another former footballer’s family is telling a version of the same story: a man who changed, who suffered, who the sport they gave everything to didn’t adequately look after when they needed it most.

Adam Hunter is not an isolated case. That’s the uncomfortable truth the AFL needs to sit with.

The Duty of Care Conversation Is Overdue

Here’s where I’ll say something that might ruffle a few feathers in Melbourne — although over here in the west, I suspect most footy fans would nod along. The AFL has a genuine, legal and moral duty of care to its players. Not just current players, not just the ones whose faces are on the marketing billboards. Former players too. Players whose careers ended a decade ago. Players who are quietly falling apart in the suburbs of Perth or Ballarat or wherever, without the resources to deal with what the game may have done to their brains.

The league has made some moves. There are mental health programs, there are former player support networks, there are concussion protocols that are better than they were. But if the best mate of a former Eagle is writing five pages to the AFL’s top brass saying the system failed, then the system failed. You can’t hide behind programs and brochures when the people closest to these men are telling you something went wrong.

West Coast, West Australian, and Still Waiting for the Same Respect

I’ll be honest — and yeah, I know this is where my eagle badge starts showing — there’s a part of me that wonders whether a bloke from over here gets the same attention as one from Collingwood or Hawthorn. We cops the travel disadvantage, the fixture disadvantage, the fact that our young kids are the ones who have to leave home at 16 to get drafted. And sometimes, just sometimes, it feels like when a West Australian player’s story gets hard, it’s a bit easier for the eastern seaboard to look the other way.

Adam Hunter deserves better than that. His best mate, who has done something remarkably brave in putting it all down in writing and sending it up the chain, deserves better than that. And so do every other former player out there — from every club — who might be struggling with the long-term consequences of playing this game we all love so much.

What the AFL Actually Needs to Do

Right, so what’s the practical ask here? In my view — and I’m just a bloke on a footy website, not a neurosurgeon or a lawyer — there are a few things the AFL could and should be doing:

• Respond publicly and specifically to the concerns raised in this letter. Not with corporate waffle, but with actual substance.
• Commission an independent review of how the league has handled former players diagnosed with or suspected of having CTE. Independent means not run by the AFL itself.
• Increase resourcing for former player welfare programs, particularly for players from West Australian and South Australian clubs who don’t have the same network as Victorian clubs.
• Work with medical and research bodies to establish clearer protocols for identifying and supporting players who may be experiencing CTE-related decline, even before a formal post-mortem diagnosis is possible.
• Listen to the families and mates who are the ones actually on the ground seeing what this disease does to a person. They are the frontline. They know.

The Game Is Worth Saving — But Only If It’s Honest

I love this game. I mean, obviously — I spend my weekends yelling at a telly or sitting in the stands at Optus, sometimes doing both at once. I want this game to exist for my kids and their kids. And the only way that happens is if the AFL takes the hard questions about player welfare seriously, rather than treating them like a reputational problem to be managed.

Adam Hunter’s best mate didn’t write that letter to cause trouble. He wrote it becasue he watched his friend suffer, and he wants to make sure it doesn’t keep happening. That’s not an attack on footy. That’s an act of love for it.

The AFL would do well to recognise the difference.

Final Word

Over here in the west, we’re proud of every bloke who’s pulled on the hoops or the blue and gold and run out onto that ground. We claim them. Adam Hunter is one of ours. His story matters. And the people at the top of this sport owe it to him — and to every player who came before and after — to genuinely reckon with what this game asks of the human body and the human brain.

Five pages. Read every word of it, gentlemen.