{"id":874784,"date":"2026-08-31T08:02:17","date_gmt":"2026-08-31T08:02:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/874784\/"},"modified":"2026-08-31T08:02:17","modified_gmt":"2026-08-31T08:02:17","slug":"cats-claim-they-are-not-distracted-by-concussion-controversy-ahead-of-afl-elimination-final","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/874784\/","title":{"rendered":"Cats claim they are not distracted by concussion controversy ahead of AFL elimination final"},"content":{"rendered":"

Geelong midfielder Tom Atkins is adamant the club’s concussion saga has not been a distraction for the players as they prepare for Friday night’s elimination final against Carlton at the MCG.<\/p>\n

The Cats were last week fined $140,000 for failing to officially inform the AFL about the concussion waiver in Jake Kolodjashnij’s contract<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Geelong fined over concussion scandal<\/a><\/p>\n

The AFL hands down its penalty after a meeting between the commission and Geelong regarding Jake Kolodjashnij’s now-controversial contract.<\/p>\n

The penalty is $100,000 plus a suspended sanction of $40,000, which stems from the league fining Geelong last October after an investigation into the club’s third-party agreements.<\/p>\n

Kolodjashnij, who came forward as the player involved shortly after the story broke and has not played at any level since<\/a>, returned to the club last week ahead of the finals.<\/p>\n

Asked on Monday whether he or another player had a discussion around a similar concussion agreement, Atkins said: “No.”<\/p>\n

“Our focus has been performing on the weekends and we just wanted to make sure Kola [Kolodjashnij] was all right as teammates and as friends,” Atkins said.<\/p>\n

Voss assesses Blues’ finals hopes<\/a><\/p>\n

Michael Voss speaks about the Blues’ chances in the finals following their stunning turnaround.<\/p>\n

“That’s probably the extent of the detail that we looked into it as players.”<\/p>\n

Atkins said it was “awesome” to have Kolodjashnij around the club, now the finals had arrived.<\/p>\n

“Obviously we’d love him to be back playing and back in training, but hopefully that can get itself sorted soon,” Atkins said.<\/p>\n

“But just having him in the rooms and seeing him smiling again is good.”<\/p>\n

AAP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Geelong midfielder Tom Atkins is adamant the club’s concussion saga has not been a distraction for the players…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":874785,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,3239,444115,21875,16308,36987,13659,418101,85,23078],"class_list":["post-874784","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-carlton-blues","tag-concussion-waiver","tag-elimination","tag-finals","tag-fine","tag-geelong-cats","tag-jake-kolodjashnij","tag-sports","tag-tom-atkins"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874784","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=874784"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874784\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/874785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=874784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=874784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=874784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}