{"id":846394,"date":"2026-08-07T04:52:14","date_gmt":"2026-08-07T04:52:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/846394\/"},"modified":"2026-08-07T04:52:14","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T04:52:14","slug":"the-questions-afl-chairman-craig-drummond-must-answer-about-the-geelong-cats-concussion-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/846394\/","title":{"rendered":"The questions AFL chairman Craig Drummond must answer about the Geelong Cats\u2019 concussion deal"},"content":{"rendered":"

Opinion<\/p>\n

\"JakeJake Niall<\/a>Chief football writer, The Age<\/p>\n

August 7, 2026 \u2014 10:54am<\/p>\n

August 7, 2026 \u2014 10:54am<\/p>\n

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AFL Commission chairman Craig Drummond was president of Geelong, and part of the deliberations and ultimate decision, when the Cats struck what has been acknowledged was an inappropriate waiver with a player who had a history of concussions.<\/p>\n

On Thursday, as the story detonated that the Cats had signed the player to a waiver that diminished his legal rights \u2013 at least on paper \u2013 Drummond was asked to respond to questions from this masthead, and doubtless other media, about his role in the shonky waiver.<\/p>\n

\"CraigCraig Drummond\u2019s statement does not address the questions that need to be answered about the concussion waiver Geelong signed with a senior player, when Drummond was Cats president.AFL Photos via Getty Images<\/p>\n

The AFL chairman, who holds the highest office in the game, issued a brief statement that did not address the obvious questions that he should have taken on, given his twin hats as AFL chairman and the president of the club at the time that this hubristic document was signed, without the AFL\u2019s consent or knowledge.<\/p>\n

Drummond\u2019s AFL chose not to sanction Geelong, a matter of months after Carlton were fined $75,000 for their handling of the Elijah Hollands affair, which was about a different kind of player safety \u2013 mental health.<\/p>\n

The AFL took weeks to sort through the messy Hollands imbroglio before settling on a sanction. The league needed only half a day to rule that the Cats were off the hook.<\/p>\n

Drummond\u2019s time as AFL chairman has won praise within clubs for the energetic reshaping of the commission and introducing the kind of governance \u2013 term limits for the board, most of all \u2013 that were not evident during the Richard Goyder era, in which Gillon McLachlan was allowed to run his race.<\/p>\n

But, as with political leaders, AFL honeymoons are as fleeting as Essendon winning streaks and Drummond did not last the whole 2026 season without finding himself in political cow manure.<\/p>\n

His statement contained the clich\u00e9d motherhood lines about the clubs and AFL continuing \u201cto prioritise the health and safety of all our players\u201d.<\/p>\n

Those words read as utterly hollow, since Geelong had not made the player\u2019s \u201chealth and safety\u201d their priority in the now-recanted part of the agreement. The whole objective of the waiver was to absolve the club of responsibility for the player\u2019s long-term health (in relation to head injuries) and put the onus on the player.<\/p>\n

The only excuse for the Cats is that it would have been easier to not offer the player a contract (the AFL concussion panel had cleared him to play). While it was the player\u2019s initiative that this deal be struck, the Cats went off the reservation by getting him to sign away legal protections.<\/p>\n

\"BeforeBefore he became AFL chairman, Drummond was Geelong\u2019s president. Here he celebrates the Cats\u2019 2022 grand final win with Patrick Dangerfield.Getty<\/p>\n

Carefully crafted statements, without answering questions, is a strategy that could succeed for Drummond and the AFL given society\u2019s attention spans, which are shorter than the time it took the league to clear the Cats.<\/p>\n

Drummond, however, has a responsibility to address questions about an embarrassing, ill-considered and furtive arrangement that has not \u2013 to my knowledge \u2013 been tried on by other AFL clubs. If an oft-concussed player signed a waiver or its equivalent in the VFL, before he was drafted on to an AFL list, that still falls short of Geelong\u2019s too-clever ploy.<\/p>\n

Drummond was at the helm of Geelong when this happened, and holds even greater responsibility now as AFL chairman. These questions, which he hasn\u2019t yet padded up for, should be answered candidly, in full:<\/p>\n

Related Article\"PERTH,<\/a>As president of Geelong in 2024, do you take responsibility for the waiver the club signed with the player? Do you and Geelong owe the player an apology?Why was this waiver necessary? Did any parts trouble you then?You\u2019ve called Geelong\u2019s changes \u201cappropriate\u201d. Can you clarify if you regret that you were a party to this arrangement?You say health and safety of players is paramount. Why was Geelong not sanctioned, for an arrangement that went outside the AFL and the AFL Players Association, and which will be disallowed in future?Carlton was sanctioned with a $75,000 fine for allowing a medically unfit player on the field. Please explain the vast gap in consequence for Carlton\u2019s offence and Geelong\u2019s missteps?Given the conflict of interest between your roles as Geelong president then, and AFL chairman now, how did you ensure that the decisions and discussions within the AFL were not influenced by your interests? What steps, if any, did you take?<\/p>\n

This episode underscores that Geelong\u2019s greatness as a footy club has little basis in some imagined moral superiority of \u201cvalues\u201d and decency; the narrative some ex-Geelong players and officials unwisely spruik. Yes, the Cats are exceptional \u2013 in coaching, recruiting and development, not in niceness, humility and tender care.<\/p>\n

They come across as a ruthless organisation that makes hard calls and is focused on winning games, not friends or wellbeing awards.<\/p>\n

Keep up to date with the best AFL coverage in the country. Sign up for the Real Footy newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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\"JakeJake Niall<\/a> is a Walkley award-winning sports journalist and chief AFL writer for The Age.Connect via X<\/a> or email<\/a>.From our partners<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Opinion Jake NiallChief football writer, The Age August 7, 2026 \u2014 10:54am August 7, 2026 \u2014 10:54am Save…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":846395,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85],"class_list":["post-846394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-afl","tag-afl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian-football-league","tag-australianfootballleague","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846394","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=846394"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846394\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/846395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=846394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=846394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=846394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}