AFL trying to ‘divide and conquer’ over brain bank endorsement, concussion expert says

A leading concussion specialist has accused the AFL and the players' union of attempting to "divide and conquer" by hesitating to endorse the Australian Sports Brain Bank (ASBB) as the primary place for players to donate their brains, despite a direct recommendation to do so by a coroner.

More than a year after the recommendation by the coroner who oversaw the Danny Frawley inquest, the AFL says it is "well progressed" in discussions with both the ASBB and the Sydney Brain Bank, with a view to selecting one or the other - or both - as partners for its mooted AFL/AFLPA brain bank donation program.

But Dr Adrian Cohen, an expert in traumatic brain injury, director of Headsafe and senior lecturer at the University of Sydney, has alleged the governing body is overlooking the ASBB's "specific expertise" and unrivalled bank of sports brain tissue because it "isn't aligned" with the AFL's approach to concussion research.

In February, 2021, Victorian coroner Paresa Spanos handed down her findings into the death of the St Kilda great Frawley, confirming a postmortem analysis of his brain found he had low-stage chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a brain disease linked to repeated blows to the head.

That diagnosis was made via an autopsy conducted by the ASBB, to which Frawley's family donated his brain after the former Richmond coach took his own life following a severe decline in mental health.

Frawley's brain is one of 21 to have been tested by the ASBB since it was set up in 2018 specifically to understand CTE and other brain pathology associated with repetitive head injury in sport and elsewhere. Others include those of Shane Tuck, Polly Farmer and Andrew Macpherson, along with two anonymous former professional rugby league players - all of whom were found to have CTE lesions on their brains.

Over the course of four years, the ASBB - established by the neuropathology department at Sydney's RPA hospital in partnership with the Brain and Mind Centre at the University of Sydney and the Concussion Legacy Foundation in the United States - has become the pre-eminent brain bank in this space, having to date received more than 600 donation pledges from amateur and professional sportspeople.