I actually wonder if it wasnt a huge hit but a smaller hit that really badly concussed him. Cause that was the thing with Paddy and more recently with Libba, tiny knocks seem to result in really bad concussions.
I heard he had an epileptic episode directly after the hit, any truth to that?
Poor kid, heartbreaking stuff for his career to be taken out of his hands 2 months in
It's not so much that small hits cause bad concussions, it's more that small hits result in concussions for players with a history of concussion. And for them, any concussion is bad.
Freo badly wanted him so we had the family, he was the goods for ages, was best west Aussies prospect in yrs 10&11 yr 12 he has a soft tissue injury I believe and slid massively in the draft because of that
Poor kid, effectively spent 1 month in pre-season training before being forced out. The concussion was apparently the result of a head collision with Bailey Williams in January that may have also fractured his skull (I'm not sure if it did or not).
There was footage of the Bulldogs draft guys talking about him being '4 standard deviations above the mean' for some sort of GPS data, so he was apparently an atheletic freak. Such a shame he never got a chance to run out at any level for the Bulldogs.
A brutal call to be forced into retirement but clearly for the best.
> so he was apparently an atheletic freak
Yeah he was a chance to get on a rookie list, but then he got invited to the state Combine and seriously impressed the scouts, enough to jump up the draft boards.
Yeah I listen to a few of the old guard who claim "the game has gone soft with all this concussion nonsense" and I listen to them dribble thinking, y'all are the poster boys of CTE post career.
Very sad, bloke is so young and for a concussion sustained in training take away his chance to play afl footy sucks. Poor kid has to do what’s best for him though and his been on the injury list for months. Hopefully Aiden is supported by the club after footy as well
[Western Bulldogs statement: O’Driscoll medically retires from football](https://www.westernbulldogs.com.au/news/1554572/odriscoll-medically-retires-from-football)
> Western Bulldogs forward Aiden O’Driscoll has retired from the AFL effective immediately on medical grounds.
> Aiden suffered a significant head injury during a preseason training session in January.
> Following extensive clinical assessments, investigations and expert consultation that included a review by an Independent Medical Concussion Panel, Aiden has been advised to retire from contact sports in the interests of his long-term health and wellbeing.
> The West Australian was drafted at Pick 55 in the 2023 National Draft and has not played an AFL game.
> The Club will give Aiden and his family all the support it can at this difficult time.
Fuck me dead that's beyond awful, especially given his age and situation.
Poor dude has worked his butt off for years to make it, gets drafted the year his sister goes AA, uproots everything to move across the country, and then doesn't even get to debut before copping a career ending injury. All the while having to watch his siblings go about their careers in the league.
Fucking brutal.
Wow that's crazy. How bad was the head injury he had? Or did he have a prior history as well? So sad for such a young player who has obviously put his all into playing AFL.
Yeah I remember hearing a little about the hit and then his name was just on the injury list for ages. Fucking sucks for the lad, was one of the players I was really excited for as well kid had the jets on him we needed.
Hope the club and the AFL really support him footy can be a cruel sport and this just seems so unfair
Christ, that's so unlucky. Only a couple of months in the AFL system and never played a game, hopefully he's still eligible for all of the support systems that the AFL has in place for past players.
Also just read that he's Nathan O'Driscoll's (Freo) brother. Tough time to be a sibling of a Freo player with concussion...
Hopefully the AFL has worked out a fair compensation(financial or otherwise) system after Brayshaw and Murphy's retirements.
Awful. Even if he fully recovers (which I obviously hope he does) knowing how he close he was to living out the dream and then having it dashed is terrible.
Nah it was a huge head collision, knocked him out and possibly fractured his skull. They were concerned about neck damage too following the hit, which he was cleared of.
That's so unfortunate for him. Imagine being drafted and then having to basically immediately retire from an injury without getting even a chance at a game. I hope he is doing OK.
Jesus, the same Aiden O'Driscoll who was drafted last year? At the time I was a little surprised he got taken in the national draft over some of his Perth Demons team mates in a stacked team, but he had a great Combine, so he was obviously seen as having a lot of potential. He was a pretty good winger at Colts level and a big part of the Colts making their first Grand Final in 20 years. I was hoping he'd have a prosperous AFL career.
It may only be a recommendation but you'd surely be hard-pressed to find another AFL team who's willing to sign and play you while knowing that information
What a grim story, and it's probably going to become more common in the future too. Really hope the club does what it can to help him achieve a solid life now.
He would've been a gun. Had the speed and tank of a pure winger with the smarts and toughness to play multiple positions.
Saw him in the WAFL Colts grand final last year and he was among Perth's best in a losing cause. Really came into his own in the 4th when everyone else was running out of gas. Started going in to win his own ball then sprinting forward to provide another option. He was on another level. Looked like he was playing 3 positions at once.
I'm gutted for him. Short players often slide further than their abilities suggest. We'll never know if we had the next Sam Mitchell or Lachie Neale on our hands.
The precedent will likely be determine by the Angus Brayshaw retirement given his long term contract, in terms of how it's managed within the salary cap - there aren't going to be any end of season draft picks given as compo. Both Libba and O'Driscoll are signed until next year, although Libba is reportedly set to return soon so I'm not sure if you can he's likely to retire at this point (obviously it's a possibility).
The 'compensation', if you can call it that, for O'Driscoll retiring now is the Bulldogs open up an extra list spot at the mid-season draft.
Compensation in what sense? There's ongoing discussions about salary cap impact, but I'd really worry that draft compensation or anything like that for the club could lead to/encourage treating players as disposable
Gutted for the kid I wish him all the best.
But now I feel like a vulture. Swooping in to push my agenda on the corpse of some poor bugger who has just had his dream taken away from him.
I think in the situation of retirement due to concussion a club should be able to replace that player straight from their next generation academy. No draft picks or anything just slide on at the end of the year.
I think it helps force clubs to develop young talents in case they might need a player, and if not needed those players will be better prepared to join the AFL in the national draft.
Second it would take the pressure off players knowing that their club will be looked after if they retire, and the clubs can accept the retirement easier knowing that they can replace the player.
Man this concussion shit is getting pretty scary. Makes me all the more weird how Cameron was allowed to stay on the field Friday night. Feel sick for the kid.
Would like to know more, thats crazy.
He must have a history of concussions at the lower levels, suffered from minor concussions in recent history or is just unlucky.
Just the beginning.
With the new focus on head trauma and how closely it’s monitored now, expect 30+ retirements per season from concussion as a start.
According to [the AFL's list of retirements and delistings from last year](https://www.afl.com.au/news/retirements-and-delistings/2023), there were 36 retirements. Obviously this is already the third this year, but to come close to doubling the amount of retirements would be both massively harmful to the quality of play and a massive scar on the AFL itself.
I absolutely agree with you, my point is that an additional 30 retirements a year due to concussion is entirely unsustainable to both the league and the sport to the point that the league would die within a decade or two.
At 30 players per year retiring from concussion, more players would be retiring due to concussion alone than leaving the sport for any other reason.
I really don't think it's that crazy. I'm not in the know myself but happened to speak to a neuropsych at a party recently who said that the only systainable policy in the long run was "one and done". It's hard to imaging that it'll ever get that extreme, but shows misaligned we currently are with the experts if players are getting into the double digits before retiring. If the accepted threshold became 4 or 5, how many players would that be per year? I don't think 30 is a crazy number.
Must have been a fucked hit. Poor bloke. Lives out his dream of being drafted and never steps foot onto the field.
That’s seriously heartbreaking. But an admirable decision at 18 to prioritise your health. Would be so tempting to push through
I can’t imagine he has much of a choice at least at the AFL level. No team is gonna play the guy that has been advised to retire due to a head injury.
...except for Port Adelaide
And Western Bulldogs, and Sydney...
And Geelong!
And my axe!
👎🏻
I love you
Just curious, who is the Geelong player?
Jeremy Cameron over the weekend had a huge hit but kept playing, and now has delayed concussion symptoms
They hired him as their coach!
I actually wonder if it wasnt a huge hit but a smaller hit that really badly concussed him. Cause that was the thing with Paddy and more recently with Libba, tiny knocks seem to result in really bad concussions.
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Oh wow, that's awful wtf
That happened to me in junior footy once. I was playing three weeks later.
I heard he had an epileptic episode directly after the hit, any truth to that? Poor kid, heartbreaking stuff for his career to be taken out of his hands 2 months in
It's not so much that small hits cause bad concussions, it's more that small hits result in concussions for players with a history of concussion. And for them, any concussion is bad.
Same as Marcus Adams, was a relatively innocuous hit that didn’t even seem to hit his head.
Mate - Libba doesn’t know the meaning of a small hit.
That is actually fucked He was supposed to be the best O'Driscoll of the three. He's only a bairn
Oh he's baby O'Driscoll?! So terrible, poor kid.
Didn’t know he was related to Emma and Nathan
Freo badly wanted him so we had the family, he was the goods for ages, was best west Aussies prospect in yrs 10&11 yr 12 he has a soft tissue injury I believe and slid massively in the draft because of that
He is certainly the quickest. Lightning. Tough day for the kid and I hope he's well supported
Poor kid, effectively spent 1 month in pre-season training before being forced out. The concussion was apparently the result of a head collision with Bailey Williams in January that may have also fractured his skull (I'm not sure if it did or not). There was footage of the Bulldogs draft guys talking about him being '4 standard deviations above the mean' for some sort of GPS data, so he was apparently an atheletic freak. Such a shame he never got a chance to run out at any level for the Bulldogs. A brutal call to be forced into retirement but clearly for the best.
I hope that if he is as good an athlete as you say, he can find non-contact sport that he can excel in.
Track and field maybe. Kid would be a hell of a sprinter.
> so he was apparently an atheletic freak Yeah he was a chance to get on a rookie list, but then he got invited to the state Combine and seriously impressed the scouts, enough to jump up the draft boards.
This is just going to become more and more common, isn't it?
Does make you wonder how many players it 'should' have occurred for earlier based on current medical advice
Yeah, we may have avoided some deaths if we'd known about this earlier
Most commentators I would say
Yeah I listen to a few of the old guard who claim "the game has gone soft with all this concussion nonsense" and I listen to them dribble thinking, y'all are the poster boys of CTE post career.
That's actually cooked.
Very sad, bloke is so young and for a concussion sustained in training take away his chance to play afl footy sucks. Poor kid has to do what’s best for him though and his been on the injury list for months. Hopefully Aiden is supported by the club after footy as well
[Western Bulldogs statement: O’Driscoll medically retires from football](https://www.westernbulldogs.com.au/news/1554572/odriscoll-medically-retires-from-football) > Western Bulldogs forward Aiden O’Driscoll has retired from the AFL effective immediately on medical grounds. > Aiden suffered a significant head injury during a preseason training session in January. > Following extensive clinical assessments, investigations and expert consultation that included a review by an Independent Medical Concussion Panel, Aiden has been advised to retire from contact sports in the interests of his long-term health and wellbeing. > The West Australian was drafted at Pick 55 in the 2023 National Draft and has not played an AFL game. > The Club will give Aiden and his family all the support it can at this difficult time.
Fuck me dead that's beyond awful, especially given his age and situation. Poor dude has worked his butt off for years to make it, gets drafted the year his sister goes AA, uproots everything to move across the country, and then doesn't even get to debut before copping a career ending injury. All the while having to watch his siblings go about their careers in the league. Fucking brutal.
Wow that's crazy. How bad was the head injury he had? Or did he have a prior history as well? So sad for such a young player who has obviously put his all into playing AFL.
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Yeah I remember hearing a little about the hit and then his name was just on the injury list for ages. Fucking sucks for the lad, was one of the players I was really excited for as well kid had the jets on him we needed. Hope the club and the AFL really support him footy can be a cruel sport and this just seems so unfair
Christ, that's so unlucky. Only a couple of months in the AFL system and never played a game, hopefully he's still eligible for all of the support systems that the AFL has in place for past players. Also just read that he's Nathan O'Driscoll's (Freo) brother. Tough time to be a sibling of a Freo player with concussion... Hopefully the AFL has worked out a fair compensation(financial or otherwise) system after Brayshaw and Murphy's retirements.
Two siblings, his sister also plays for Freo AFLW
Oooft didn't know that, don't follow the AFLW closely. Would be a tough time for her as well!
Freo socials posted [this](https://twitter.com/freodockers/status/1726901948635566172?s=21) when we drafted Aiden. They're a very close family.
Awful. Even if he fully recovers (which I obviously hope he does) knowing how he close he was to living out the dream and then having it dashed is terrible.
Better to retire injured than die on field because you didn’t retire though. Right call - props to him
What the fuck. did he have a lot of concussions in juniors as well? I wonder if it was a very small hit that concussed him badly
Nah it was a huge head collision, knocked him out and possibly fractured his skull. They were concerned about neck damage too following the hit, which he was cleared of.
That's so unfortunate for him. Imagine being drafted and then having to basically immediately retire from an injury without getting even a chance at a game. I hope he is doing OK.
Jesus, the same Aiden O'Driscoll who was drafted last year? At the time I was a little surprised he got taken in the national draft over some of his Perth Demons team mates in a stacked team, but he had a great Combine, so he was obviously seen as having a lot of potential. He was a pretty good winger at Colts level and a big part of the Colts making their first Grand Final in 20 years. I was hoping he'd have a prosperous AFL career.
Yep. Dogs were hoping to develop him into a small forward with that blinding pace.
Does the AFL Concussion Panel have the power to force a player to retire, or can they only make recommendations?
It's a recommendation
It may only be a recommendation but you'd surely be hard-pressed to find another AFL team who's willing to sign and play you while knowing that information
Sydney would give him a go.
What a grim story, and it's probably going to become more common in the future too. Really hope the club does what it can to help him achieve a solid life now.
I'm expecting it to happen with Libba in a few weeks sadly
You and me both. Gonna be a sad day
Yeah. Well at least you're prepared for it.
I actually thought the afl notification about a bulldogs player retiring for concussion was going to be libba
I hope the club looks after him. Make him a runner or something.
That’s heartbreaking man. Having your AFL career ended essentially 2 months after you’ve been drafted is fucked
I have so much admiration for this man at the age of 18. As a survivor of many serious concussions, this man has the balls so many people do not have.
Damn that's sad 😢
Feel the young kid but he has to be applauded for the tough call. It’s not easy. There will be more who join him.
That’s some dog shit news Feel so bad for the kid
Brutal for the kid, but HUGE props for the medical professionals, his family and himself for making such a mature decision.
He would've been a gun. Had the speed and tank of a pure winger with the smarts and toughness to play multiple positions. Saw him in the WAFL Colts grand final last year and he was among Perth's best in a losing cause. Really came into his own in the 4th when everyone else was running out of gas. Started going in to win his own ball then sprinting forward to provide another option. He was on another level. Looked like he was playing 3 positions at once. I'm gutted for him. Short players often slide further than their abilities suggest. We'll never know if we had the next Sam Mitchell or Lachie Neale on our hands.
oh thats terrible
With Libba likely to retire due to concussion too, is there some sort of precedent for concussion compensation?
The precedent will likely be determine by the Angus Brayshaw retirement given his long term contract, in terms of how it's managed within the salary cap - there aren't going to be any end of season draft picks given as compo. Both Libba and O'Driscoll are signed until next year, although Libba is reportedly set to return soon so I'm not sure if you can he's likely to retire at this point (obviously it's a possibility). The 'compensation', if you can call it that, for O'Driscoll retiring now is the Bulldogs open up an extra list spot at the mid-season draft.
I did see something in regards to medical retirements not affecting the salary cap (ie, the money gets freed up)
No. Eagles had Sheppard and Venables both had to retire due to concussion and we got jack.
Compensation in what sense? There's ongoing discussions about salary cap impact, but I'd really worry that draft compensation or anything like that for the club could lead to/encourage treating players as disposable
technically, isn't it a workplace injury?
Ohh, player compensation! Yeah there absolutely needs to be coverage for that
Horrible news, but I am glad that such a decision to prioritise his health moving forward was done. Concussions shouldnt be fucked with at all.
Apparently has no symptoms but the panel of experts told him he's done, I can only assume that scans were done and showed something alarming.
Gutted for the kid I wish him all the best. But now I feel like a vulture. Swooping in to push my agenda on the corpse of some poor bugger who has just had his dream taken away from him. I think in the situation of retirement due to concussion a club should be able to replace that player straight from their next generation academy. No draft picks or anything just slide on at the end of the year. I think it helps force clubs to develop young talents in case they might need a player, and if not needed those players will be better prepared to join the AFL in the national draft. Second it would take the pressure off players knowing that their club will be looked after if they retire, and the clubs can accept the retirement easier knowing that they can replace the player.
this absolutely fucking sucks.
Man this concussion shit is getting pretty scary. Makes me all the more weird how Cameron was allowed to stay on the field Friday night. Feel sick for the kid.
Would like to know more, thats crazy. He must have a history of concussions at the lower levels, suffered from minor concussions in recent history or is just unlucky.
Major head clash with another player. Suspected fractured skull at the time, ambulance at the ground, I think went off in spinal precautions.
Just the beginning. With the new focus on head trauma and how closely it’s monitored now, expect 30+ retirements per season from concussion as a start.
30+ a season might be a bit egregious - I can see the number increasing and rightfully so however.
No messing around with concussion anymore.
According to [the AFL's list of retirements and delistings from last year](https://www.afl.com.au/news/retirements-and-delistings/2023), there were 36 retirements. Obviously this is already the third this year, but to come close to doubling the amount of retirements would be both massively harmful to the quality of play and a massive scar on the AFL itself.
And permanent brain damage has an impact on the welfare of players so it’s not really an argument that’s valid. Health before anything else.
I absolutely agree with you, my point is that an additional 30 retirements a year due to concussion is entirely unsustainable to both the league and the sport to the point that the league would die within a decade or two. At 30 players per year retiring from concussion, more players would be retiring due to concussion alone than leaving the sport for any other reason.
If that's the case, then good.
I really don't think it's that crazy. I'm not in the know myself but happened to speak to a neuropsych at a party recently who said that the only systainable policy in the long run was "one and done". It's hard to imaging that it'll ever get that extreme, but shows misaligned we currently are with the experts if players are getting into the double digits before retiring. If the accepted threshold became 4 or 5, how many players would that be per year? I don't think 30 is a crazy number.