{"id":782035,"date":"2026-07-06T05:49:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-06T05:49:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/782035\/"},"modified":"2026-07-06T05:49:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-06T05:49:10","slug":"melbourne-teacher-receiving-end-of-life-care-after-horror-head-clash-during-suburban-football-game-australian-rules-football","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/782035\/","title":{"rendered":"Melbourne teacher receiving end-of-life care after horror head clash during suburban football game | Australian rules football"},"content":{"rendered":"

A suburban Melbourne<\/a> footballer is receiving \u201cend-of-life\u201d care in hospital after a horror head clash saw him fall to the ground and hit his head on a covered cricket pitch, his club says.<\/p>\n

High school teacher Nathan Fitzgerald, 27, was taken to Royal Melbourne hospital on Saturday after the incident during an Australian rules football<\/a> game in Lalor, in Melbourne\u2019s north.<\/p>\n

According to his club\u2019s president, Fitzgerald had been playing for Epping when, during a tackle, he clashed heads with another player before receiving a second blow to the head \u201cwhich could have been from a flailing boot or a knee\u201d.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThen he\u2019s hit his head on the ground,\u201d the Epping football netball club president, Luke De Vincentis, told ABC Radio Melbourne on Monday.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd [it] has been reported on the part of the ground that\u2019s much harder than everywhere else where the cricket pitch runs through the middle of the ground.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nathan Fitzgerald hit his head on a covered cricket pitch at the football ground in Lalor, his club\u2019s president said. Photograph: City of Whittlesea Council<\/p>\n

De Vincentis described Fitzgerald as a \u201cgentle soul of a man\u201d, who was loving and humble.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe had this smile on his face \u2013 his teeth would light up a room from a mile away because he always had a smile on his face. And [he] just gave time to everyone,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He said the club was still coming to terms with the accident, with a statement released a statement on Sunday saying Fitzgerald\u2019s \u201ccondition deteriorated overnight and [he] is now receiving end-of-life care\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve lost a teammate and a much-loved person from the club \u2013 but more importantly the Fitzgerald family have lost a son and a brother,\u201d De Vincentis said on Monday.<\/p>\n

De Vincentis called for an investigation into the playing of football on fields that have cricket pitches, noting that the one at the ground in which Saturday\u2019s incident occurred had been covered.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s always been some risks and concerns involved around the cricket pitches on footy ovals I guess,\u201d he said. \u201cUnfortunately, because we are just local amateur sports, we have to be able to use these facilities for multiple purposes.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut the risk does come that there is quite a hard strip of surface in the middle of a ground where there\u2019s a high velocity, high contact sport played on.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to The Age<\/a>, a spokesperson for the Northern Football Netball League has said that umpires inspected the ground before the game.<\/p>\n

In a statement on Saturday, the league said \u201cthere is no suggestion that what took place was anything other than a football accident\u201d.<\/p>\n

There has been increased focus on head knocks<\/a> in football in recent years amid a better understanding of chronic traumatic encephalopathy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A suburban Melbourne footballer is receiving \u201cend-of-life\u201d care in hospital after a horror head clash saw him fall…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":782036,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-782035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/782035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=782035"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/782035\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/782036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=782035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=782035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=782035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}