The AFL has issued an apology to players who took part in a concussion study after an independent review found the research project to be “under-funded and under-resourced”.
The independent review, chaired by senior lawyer Bernard Quinn KC, found that seven editorials from associate professor and ex-AFL concussion advisor Paul McCrory contained plagiarised text in what was an “embarrassing blemish” on McCrory’s reputation.
A 260-page report from the review was made public by the AFL on Tuesday. It determined that the research project was under-funded and under-resourced and suffered from a lack of governance, stewardship and coordination in how it was rolled-out and implemented, and how it simultaneously accommodated clinical and research objectives.
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AFL general counsel Andrew Dillon said the league accepted the outcome of the report and apologised to the players who were “let down” by the study.
“The AFL apologises to the past players who gave up their time in the hope of better understanding their own conditions and to assist with the research for the benefit of current and future players and were let down by the manner in which some of the research and clinical programs were at times conducted,” Dillon said in an AFL statement.
“We will continue to invest, engage, resource and do better on this type of research and the facilitation of care going forward.”
The AFL’s apology comes after former Eagles premiership player Daniel Venables, whose career was cut short due to concussion problems, was critical of the league’s handling of concussion issues, saying the AFL “100 per cent” let him down.
“I wasted a lot of time, the most important part of my rehab,” he told Seven earlier this year.
“Yeah, for sure (I could be playing footy).
“There were a lot of red flags looking back on it, and it’s shattering.”
Despite the report shedding light on McCrory’s plagiarism, it also found that the instances of plagiarism “do not affect or taint the work” that the professor had undertaken as they “do not involve the falsification or fabrication of relevant research”.
While the panel found that McCrory was neither an employee nor a contractor to the AFL, but rather an advisor on an “informal and mostly unpaid basis”, the relationship between the two parties was found to have “problematic” aspects, particularly relating to “the absence of clear reporting lines”.
McCrory was found to have “protracted periods” of no or delayed responses to correspondence. It was deemed that more active oversight from the AFL may have helped mitigate these problems.
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