THE DOCO
In a coastal Victorian town, beloved community football club, Seaford FNC, has recently celebrated their 100th year. But as the club starts a new season, president Donny O'Neil can't shake his concern over the rising issue of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) in elite collision sports.
In the last twenty years, elite sports players around the globe have increasingly revealed brain damage diagnoses resulting from participation in the games they love, and many athletes continue to report troubling symptoms including memory loss, behavioural issues, anger management, addiction and suicidality. Symptoms that significantly affect not only their quality of life, but their prospect of a healthy future.
The impact on community sports is relatively unknown (even more so in female athletes) and little has been done to protect players at a community level. There are rarely club doctors on the sidelines, there is no impact monitoring technology to guide their decisions, and there is barely enough knowledge about why and how this disease manifests to understand they’re at risk.
Just a few seasons ago, one of Seaford's star players was forced to retire early from lingering concussion symptoms. Committed to ensuring the same fate doesn't fall upon any other player and concerned the issue is moving faster than their resources can keep up with, Donny decides it's time the club takes their future into their own hands. Both the men’s and women’s senior teams will be undergoing a radical brain injury management program that will shake-up the way the game is practised and played over the course of their entire 2023 season.
Professor Alan Pearce (Neurophysiologist, Research Manager Australian Sports Brain Bank - Victoria) and Annitta Siliato (Executive Director, Concussion Legacy Foundation Australia) will join Donny in shepherding the club through the change in protocols around head injuries and concussion. Ultimately, the Donny, Al and Annitta hope that their work in the 2023 season will form the basis of a blueprint for others clubs to ensure safety and longevity for their players, and keep the game alive.
CTE
WHAT IS CTE?
Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) is a degenerative brain disease found in athletes, military veterans, and others with a history of repetitive brain trauma (Boston University CTE Center). Most of what we have learned about CTE has come from the research of Prof. Ann McKee, director of the VA-BU-CLF Brain Bank. CTE has been seen in people as young as 17, and early 20s in Australia, but symptoms do not generally begin appearing until years after the onset of head impacts.
COGNITIVE SYMPTOMS
Most patients with CTE eventually experience progressive problems with thinking and memory, including:
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Short-term memory loss
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Confusion
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Impaired judgement
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Dementia
Cognitive symptoms tend to appear later in life, often in a patient’s 40s or 50s. Patients may exhibit one or both symptom clusters. In some cases, symptoms worsen with time (even if the patient suffers no additional head impacts). In other cases, symptoms may be stable for years before worsening.
MOOD AND BEHAVIOUR SYMPTOMS
Among individuals diagnosed with CTE, some report mood and behaviour symptoms that can appear as early as the patient in their 20s. Common changes seen include:
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Impulse control problems
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Aggression
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Mood swings
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Depression
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Paranoia
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Anxiety
The best available evidence tells us that CTE is caused by repetitive hits to the head sustained over a period of years. This doesn’t mean a handful of concussions; most people diagnosed with CTE suffered hundreds or thousands of head impacts over the course of many years playing contact sports or serving in the military. And it’s not just concussions; the best available evidence points towards subconcussive impacts, or hits to the head that don’t cause full-blown concussions, as the biggest factor. Currently, CTE can only be diagnosed after death through brain tissue analysis.
WHAT CAUSES CTE?
THE SEAFORD EXPERIMENT
The revolutionary cutting-edge experiment is a world first in community sports, and will give Seaford FNC an unprecedented opportunity to test out science that the elite levels are afraid to touch. With a focus on recovery tailored to the individual, the plan will incorporate reduced contact in training, prolonged off-field periods and an intensive medical assessment process aided by state-of-the-art technology to identify and quantify the severity and regularity of head impacts incurred. All with the hope of creating a blueprint for other clubs across all codes and levels.
In addition to this action the club can take through the 2023 season, the data collected will allow Prof. Alan Pearce to write potentially invaluable medical papers that may help the wider research community to understand the risks at this level.
