Former Australian Test cricketer Will Pucovski has launched landmark legal action against the Melbourne private school he attended over the alleged mishandling of his first brain injury in a series of concussions that led to his premature retirement.
The Herald Sun reported on Tuesday that lawyers for Pucovski filed a statement of claim alleging Brighton Grammar breached its duty of care when he was heavily concussed at an Australian rules football training session in 2014.
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The then teenager missed months of school after the hit which saw him knocked unconscious, but returned to training only minutes later.
It was the first of 13 brain injuries that led to his retirement from cricket after receiving expert advice from an independent panel last year – having last played for Victoria in 2024.
Pucovski played his lone Test for Australia against India at SCG in 2021, scoring 62 opening the batting in the first innings against the likes of Jasprit Bumrah.
He injured his shoulder while fielding, which forced him out of the series finale at the Gabba, but it was the lasting impacts of the repeated brain injuries to ended arguably the nation’s most promising batter’s career.
The 28-year-old averaged 45.19 in first-class cricket after debuting for Victoria as a teenager.
He scored seven centuries for the Vics in the Sheffield Shield, including back-to-back double tons in late 2020 that led to his elevation to the Test side.
But there are concerns that Pucovski’s repeated head knocks to the brain disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) – which was found in AFL great Danny Frawley, who died at age 56, as well as former AFL players Shane Tuck and Adam Hunter, who died aged 40 and 43.
His ongoing symptoms include vision problems, headaches, fatigue, nausea, motion sickness and trouble completing tasks on the left side of his body.
Pucovski, who is now head coach of Melbourne Cricket Club and a commentator for Channel 7, was only 16 when he was knocked out by a sling tackle at football training.
Experts have long argued adolescent brains are much more vulnerable to the impacts of, and damage caused by, forceful blows to the head, and require more conservative care than adult brains.
The Australian Sports Commission requires concussed adolescents to have 14 days of symptom-free rest before they can resume any contact training.
Pucovski said he “never felt the same” after his teammate’s knee hit hard into the soft part of his temple during a wrestling drill.
“I got sling tackled into ironically one of my best mate’s knees who was running the other way,” Pucovski said last month at a ‘Taverners’ function at Kooyong Lawn Tennis Club.
“I literally got walked to the sidelines. And then my only memory was the coach coming up to me and being like ‘Do you want to keep training?’
“I am like ‘Yeah’.
“So I just went and trained for the rest of the day.
“It is probably the biggest day of my life in a weird way because I have never felt the same since that day.
“I went from someone who would do anything and everything to basically sitting on the couch doing nothing for an extended period.”
In the statement of claim, it is alleged that he suffered a “traumatic brain injury from which he has never recovered”.
It adds Pucovski has “severe head trauma syndrome with symptom severity scores which have never returned to baseline”.
Neurosurgeon and concussion researcher Professor Gavin Davis said Pucovski required immediate medical assessment and should not have returned to training that day, or been used as the team’s runner the following week.
He suffered blurred vision during a training session at the school gym the next day and ended up in hospital later in the week.
Brighton Grammar’s first-grade team had medical support available, but the seconds’ side, where Pucovski played, did not receive the same treatment.
“I got ‘foggy eyes’,” he said.
“I’m like ‘I can’t see’, thinking I was just tired or fatigued or something, which turned out to be from the concussion.
“The next couple of days I just started to feel more sick, the headaches got worse and worse.
“Five or six days later I started feeling really, really sick and mum and dad took me to hospital.
“The mental health challenges started pretty quickly.”
Lawyers for Pucovski allege “reasonable care was not taken”.
“As an absolute rule, no athlete may return to sport on the day of (brain) injury and requires medical assessment before returning to further activity,” Prof Davis said.
“These instructions are outlined on the AFL community website.”
Pucovski suffered nine concussions before playing for Australia, and not all of them came from being struck on the helmet by bouncers.
He was also hit in the head fielding when a ball took a bad bounce, by a ball from adjoining net during a training session, by a volleyball in a warm-up and bumped into a door at home.
He took a break from cricket in 2022, but upon his return, he was hit in the head while batting twice in early 2024 that led to his retirement.
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