Former Western Bulldogs player Aiden O’Driscoll has accused the AFL of abandoning him after a concussion forced him to retire, saying the impact of the injury left him questioning whether his life was worth living.
O’Driscoll, now 21, suffered multiple brain bleeds in a training collision in 2024, shortly after being drafted. The severity of the injury ended his playing career and his claim for a $600,000 severe-injury payment was rejected by the AFL and the AFL Players’ Association.
In an emotional Instagram post, O’Driscoll described the past two years as “the most difficult of my life” and said it took six weeks for the league to arrange psychological support.
“The AFL has been an absolute joke towards helping me,” he wrote. “Mentally, I was so exhausted and drained, and it took six weeks for the AFL to find me a psychologist.”
He said the combination of grief, pain and trauma had brought him close to ending his life. “I started questioning my life? If it was worth living? I was so close to ending everything, I would’ve been free from all the pain/trauma,” he wrote.
O’Driscoll said he continued to experience brain fog, dizziness, depression, nausea, fatigue and memory loss. Doctors had described his injury, which included eight micro brain bleeds and a fracture behind his ear, as “one of the worse (sic) they’d ever seen”.
“It’s not just the fact that I can’t play AFL again, it’s more so the ongoing effects from this one hit,” he said, questioning why something so severe had happened to an 18-year-old with a future in the sport.
He credited his family, partner and friends with helping him through the ordeal, saying only those close to him understood what he had experienced.
“I wish I could describe what it’s like in a nutshell, but I could only describe it like losing something in the family, except I’m the one who’s died and had to come back as a new version of ‘Aiden’,” he wrote.
O’Driscoll’s criticism comes as concussion management in Australian rules football faces renewed scrutiny. Geelong announced on Tuesday that premiership defender Jake Kolodjashnij had medically retired after previously identifying himself as the player involved in a secret agreement with the club concerning future on-field head trauma.
The Cats were fined $140,000 after an independent AFL review found the agreement altered Kolodjashnij’s playing contract and should have been submitted to the league and players’ association for scrutiny.
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