Will Schofield column on Geelong concussion scandal, Jake Kolodjashnij waiver and why the Cats were ‘ahead of their time’

Geelong should be punished heavily for hiding its agreement with Jake Kolodjashnij. But the agreement itself might actually be the future of the AFL.

The Cats, from my viewpoint, clearly knew they were doing the wrong thing. That’s why they hid Kolodjashnij’s waiver, because under no circumstance would a contract – which is what a waiver is – be signed by a player that you wouldn’t lodge with the AFL and AFLPA.

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It’s why the Cats must be punished substantially, because it questions the integrity of any contract they’ve ever done. It naturally leads to the question: ‘If you’re hiding this, what else are you hiding?’ I’m not saying they’re hiding anything else, but you’d have to say this deal was done under the table.

I’ve heard suggestions the Cats must be deducted premiership points and/or stripped of draft picks, but I wouldn’t go that far. It’d have to be a very significant fine, probably six figures. Geelong’s mistake wasn’t necessarily the existence of the waiver, it was the secrecy of it.

But this is where the bigger problem for Geelong emerges, because there’s a growing perception the club constantly finds the grey areas and operates within them.

There was the AFL investigation in early 2025 into a third-party arrangement between Cats coach Chris Scott and long-term Geelong sponsor Morris Finance. Later in the year, Geelong was fined $77,500 after the completion of the AFL’s long-running audit of the club’s finances, which found no TPP breaches but a series of “non-disclosures or late disclosures” of arrangements with club associates and third parties. There’s also the link with former club sponsor Sy Giang Nguyen, who last week was hit with 309 counts of obtaining financial advantage by deception over a five-year period.

That’s a lot of smoke. None of those things have been ‘massive’ issues, but it’s still a lot of smoke.

At a different level, look at what they do with their injury reports every week, as well as their late changes. They always find a way to do it their way.

The Cats would argue it’s ‘within the rules’. But the rest of us are going: “Well, there’s a lot of ‘maybes’ happening at Geelong.”

WHY THE WAIVER ITSELF COULD BECOME INEVITABLE

While Geelong should be punished for how it went about this, the club might be ahead of the AFL and its competitors on one important point.

The Cats appear to be in front of where we’ll get to as a competition – because I think players will have to sign these sorts of deals in the future. It’ll be mandatory.

Ultimately, players sign up to play a combative and physical sport where huge risks are taken. They say: ‘I understand the risks I’m taking by playing and I’m not going to sue you in the future for workplace or injuries related to the sport. Yes, I want coverage and insurance, but I’m not going to litigate against you.’

I don’t think it’s a secret the biggest issue, not only for the AFL, but in world sport in general, is litigation going forward. How do leagues and sports across the world, including the AFL, protect themselves from things that have happened in the past and a lack of information and/or increased opportunities to litigate against your experiences?

It’s happened in the States, with the NFL facing huge payouts to former players. We’re now starting to see it in the AFL.

How does professional sport protect itself from the enormous legal consequences of better concussion knowledge? It’s the biggest risk to the game, because if you continue to pay out, any player that’s ever played could find something that’s happened to them in the game that, I think, they could sue the AFL on.

If I look at my own career, there are things that happened I could go back on and say, ‘well, you didn’t do enough to inform me of this’ or ‘you didn’t create an environment that was safe enough for me’. I’m sure I could find that if I wanted to, but I’m not looking to do that and I don’t think I ever would.

Yet if you continue to open yourself up, it opens the door to anyone who’s ever played to sue the AFL – and I doubt they’d have the money to finance that and they don’t have the cover for it.

If that’s the case, from this point onwards, you’ve got to find a way to play the game in a form in which players will say: ‘We’re not going to sue you’ – and I don’t have a great issue with that, to be honest.

In general, players sign up to play the game and while it may not spell it out contractually, I think there’s a moral code – an understanding that when you sign up to play the game, you know what you’re in for.

You know, as a player, it’s an extremely physical, high-contact game. There’s great risk to playing it, but there’s great reward as well. And if you’re going to take all that reward and go ‘Actually, I want some money on the back of that because of the risks I took’, it doesn’t really fit well with me personally.

‘OF COURSE YOU CAN UNDERSTAND’

As for Kolodjashnij, don’t judge him from the outside. Put yourself in the position of an AFL player in their late 20s who potentially has one final contract in front of him.

Unlike other industries in life, being an AFL player is a very finite industry. You don’t get to play until you’re 50 or 60 years old and then retire. You have probably until you’re 35 – if you’re very lucky, but more likely until you’re 30 years old – to make any money.

So, if you’re faced with the prospect of getting a one-year deal – because the club doesn’t really know whether you can play on or not because of head knocks – or signing a piece of paper that says ‘I won’t sue you’ and you can get a three- or four-year deal, I know which one I’d be taking.

You can really simplify it: players just want to play and that’s why we have a bunch of different match-day rules around protecting players from just going out and playing. I reckon it’d be the same in this circumstance.

Chris Scott’s right, we don’t have all the details. It would be nice if we did.

But Jake Kolodjashnij probably just wants to play footy. It was put on a table that if he signed this piece of paper to say ‘you’re not going to sue us’, maybe he’s like me and was happy to say: ‘I don’t want to sue the AFL, I know the risk I’m taking, I’ve faced the concussion panel, I want to play and I’m not going to sue you.’

Then the club goes: ‘No worries. Here’s your deal.’

I can completely see how it would happen.

I don’t have a great issue with the waiver itself. I can understand why Geelong would do it – and I believe they were ahead of their time a bit with it.

BODY COULD STILL PLAY … BUT THE HEAD CAN’T

I’ve seen the devastating impact of concussion first-hand, watching West Coast teammates Jeremy McGovern, Daniel Venables and Brad Sheppard have their careers cut short.

One thing with concussion is it’s not one-size-fits-all. Those three players all had different moments.

The Venables incident was like a car crash, whereas McGovern and Sheppard suffered multiple concussions. They’ve all had different symptoms, signs and stages of recovery.

All of those Eagles guys were forced into medical retirements. I reckon we’ll see more and more of them, but it’s affected West Coast more than any club in the AFL.

Those three players would probably all be playing if it wasn’t for concussion. I’m close with Gov and I think he could physically still play, but his head can’t.

It’s a broad area we haven’t looked at properly. It’s not like a hamstring, where we’ve known for 50 years a moderate strain is a 21-day injury.

We simply don’t have that same certainty with the brain, which is why this debate isn’t going away.

So Geelong should pay the price for hiding the agreement. But the AFL might ultimately have to embrace it.

Will Schofield is a West Coast premiership defender who played 194 games for the Eagles. He is also a Fox Footy analyst and host of the BackChat Podcast.