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AFL great Gary Ablett Sr reveals brain damage diagnosis

Geelong great Gary Ablett Sr has become the latest high-profile former AFL footballer to reveal a brain damage diagnosis thanks to head injuries sustained during his playing career.

Ablett, who played 248 games in his 16 years on the field, revealed this morning that his “significant structural and functional brain damage” had been manifesting over the past decade as headaches and head pressure, deterioration of his mental health and severe fatigue.

In an interview with the Herald Sun, Ablett said:

I began getting headaches and pressure in the top of my skull around 2010, initially a few days a week. It then led to depression, anxiety and extreme fatigue. Under the advice of doctors I then had numerous scans to try and find the cause of headaches and skull pressure …

From 2015 onwards, and almost every day, there were signs that things had changed, then about 12 months ago I started getting symptoms that alarmed me to the point where I contacted [Ablett’s former manager] Peter Jess, whom I’m aware has been a concussion advocate for a number of past players.

Jess helped Ablett access a magnetoencephalography scan – a neuroimaging technique that maps the brain and directly measures brain function.

The scan “showed I have significant structural and functional brain damage”, Ablett said. He is now seeing a psychiatrist.

The scans can’t detect chronic traumatic encephalopathy, the neurodegenerative disease caused by repeated head trauma, as that can only be diagnosed postmortem, by autopsy.

Ablett said he didn’t want to “bring the game into disrepute” but wanted to be open about his struggles “more for awareness and other players who may be experiencing the same problems”. He estimated that he had been knocked out cold approximately 10 times, but also went on to describe further “dozens” of times he experienced symptoms that indicated a diagnosis of concussion would have been appropriate:

… such as ears ringing and out of it for a few minutes many dozens of times, but because you weren’t knocked completely out you wouldn’t even bother mentioning it.

The AFL has just this week been hit by two class-action lawsuits from former players who sustained concussions during their careers. The same day the papers were lodged for the first case, the AFL released guidelines for the management of concussion in its elite codes and its four-year concussion strategy, including a 10-year, $25m study into the long-term effects of head injury on players.

You can read more about all the concussion-related goings on in AFL this week here:

Related: Concussion dominates headlines as NRL and AFL seasons get under way | Stephanie Convery