The Game We Love Has a Duty of Care It Cannot Ignore

Some news stops you cold. The death of Nathan Fitzgerald — footballer, teacher, son, mate to plenty — after suffering critical head injuries in a suburban reserves game is exactly that kind of news.

This isn’t about ladder positions or trade rumours or whether the umpires paid a holding-the-ball free. This is about a bloke who pulled on his boots on the weekend and never came home the same. We need to talk about it properly.

A Life Well Lived, Cut Tragically Short

Nathan Fitzgerald was, by all accounts, one of those people who gave back to his community twice over. A teacher by profession, a footballer by passion. The kind of bloke who shows up for two-a-week training in the middle of winter at a suburban oval, not because there’s a contract involved or a spotlight shining on him, but because he genuinely loves the game.

That’s the grassroots. That’s the heartbeat of Australian football, away from the broadcast cameras and the MCG roars. Hundreds of thousands of Nathans across this country every single weekend.

To his family, his students, his teammates and everyone who knew him — the entire footy community is with you. Full stop.

The Suburban Game Deserves the Same Protections

Here’s what gets me every time something like this happens. We pour extraordinary resources into player safety at the elite level. The AFL has concussion protocols, independent spotters in the stands, substitute rules, six-day breaks — the whole apparatus. And that’s right. That’s proper. It should be that way.

But what about the reserves player at a suburban footy club on a Saturday afternoon? What about the country footballer three hours from the nearest hospital? What about the under-19s kid who cops a collision and the trainer on the boundary is a well-meaning dad who completed an online first aid course two years ago?

The duty of care doesn’t stop at the boundary of the Brownlow Medal. It has to run all the way down to teh last player on the last team in the lowest grade of the lowest competition in the country. That’s not a luxury. That’s a baseline obligation.

Head Injuries: The Game’s Biggest Unresolved Challenge

Look, I’ll be honest with you. I’m a Collingwood man through and through. I’ve given plenty of column inches to whether we’re getting hard done by at the Tribunal or why our forward line needs a genuine key target. But none of that matters right now.

Head injuries in Australian football — in any contact sport — are the most serious unresolved challenge the game faces. We know more than we ever have about concussion, about traumatic brain injury, about the long-term consequences of repeated knocks to the head. The science has moved on dramatically in the last decade.

The question is whether the administrative and practical response at every level of the game has moved with it. And I think, if we’re being honest, the answer is: not fast enough.

The AFL has done genuine work here. Concussion guidelines have been tightened. Return-to-play protocols are stricter. Research partnerships with medical institutions are ongoing. Credit where it’s due.

But the AFL runs the top level. State leagues, suburban competitions, country footy — they operate under a patchwork of state and local governing bodies, clubs with thin budgets, volunteers doing their best. The resourcing gap between the elite and the grassroots is enormous, and it’s in that gap where tragedies can occur.

What Actually Needs to Happen

I’m not here to point fingers at the club Nathan played for, or the competition he played in, or any individual. We don’t have all the facts. We may never have all the facts. And it’s not my place — or anyone else’s — to assign blame when a family is grieving.

But in the spirit of making sure something meaningful comes from this tragedy, here are the conversations the game needs to have. Loudly. Urgently.

• Mandatory trained medical personnel at every match. Not just a first aid kit in a bag on the bench. A qualified person who knows what a head injury looks like and has the authority to pull a player off — permanently, not just for a three-minute assessment.
• Standardised concussion protocols that apply from the AFL all the way to suburban D-grade. Not guidelines buried in a PDF on a governing body’s website. Enforced, audited, real.
• Education for coaches, captains, and players. The culture of toughing it out is deeply embedded in footy. Admirable in some contexts. Potentially fatal in this one. Every player in the country should know the signs of a serious head injury and feel empowered to act on them.
• Funding for grassroots clubs to meet these standards. Rules without resources are just words. State governments, the AFL, sponsors — this is where the investment needs to go.

Definately easier to list these things than to implement them. I know that. But Nathan Fitzgerald’s death should be the moment the conversation moves from ‘we should probably’ to ‘we absolutely will.’

The Brotherhood of the Grassroots Club

I’ve barracked for the Pies since I was old enough to know what barracking meant. I’ve been to the ‘G more times than I can count. I know what it feels like when the whole stadium lifts and the noise hits you in the chest.

But I also grew up watching suburban footy. I know what those reserves sides mean. Blokes who worked all week — teachers, tradies, office workers — and get out there on a Saturday because the team needs them and the oval is where they belong. The change rooms afterwards, the feed, the debrief. The friendships that last decades.

Nathan Fitzgerald was part of that world. And his world, and the people in it, deserve every protection the game can offer.

Don’t Let This Moment Pass Without Action

The footy world is good at coming together in grief. Tributes, moments of silence, messages from clubs and players. And those things matter. They genuinely do.

What matters more, though, is what happens in the weeks and months after the tributes fade. Does this become a line in a governing body’s annual report? Or does it become the catalyst for real, lasting, structural change in how we protect players at every level of the game?

I know which one I’m pushing for. I know which one Nathan Fitzgerald’s family deserves.

The game we love is a beautiful, brutal, magnificent thing. We ask players to put their bodies on the line every single week. The least — the absolute least — we can do in return is make sure that when something goes wrong, we’ve done everything humanly possible to give them the best chance.

Rest easy, Nathan. The footy community is thinking of you and everyone who loves you.

Carn the Pies — but more importantly, carn the whole game doing better.