Between the politics, Jeremy Cordeaux offered up a real moral dilemma on this week’s Court of Public Opinion — and, with Pete and Gary, landed decisively on one side. Should an AFL player be free to sign away any future right to sue his club over injuries picked up while playing?
The Case In Front Of Them
The trigger was a report that Geelong couldn’t get a player to sign such a waiver. To Jeremy and Pete, the club’s trouble was puzzling. You play football, Pete argued, and you know injuries come with it. You know concussion is a risk. Given that, it seems entirely fair for a club to say: if you want to play for us and earn millions, you accept the risks and won’t sue us down the track.
Jeremy agreed without pause. A player, he said, has every right to sign a document waiving future claims — to declare, in effect, I take responsibility, the risk is mine, and the decision to keep playing is mine.
The Bill No Club Could Pay
Underneath the principle lies a practical reality Jeremy considers decisive. No club, however wealthy, could carry on its books the accumulated potential cost of tens of thousands of past and present players who might one day emerge with dementia or Alzheimer’s possibly tied to their playing days.
The legal costs alone, he argued, would be colossal — a lawyers’ picnic, in his phrase. Follow the money, he advised: clubs make plenty of it, and an open-ended liability on that scale could threaten the game’s finances entirely.
Protecting Grown Adults From Themselves
Jeremy’s central objection was to the paternalism he sees in blocking such waivers. What’s the argument against them, he asked — that footballers are too dim to understand what they sign? He rejected it outright. A professional adult, fully briefed on the risks, should be free to take responsibility for his own choices.
To deny him that, in Jeremy’s view, is to treat a grown professional as incapable of running his own life — shielding him from himself against his own clearly stated wishes.
A Lesson From The Studio
He reached into his own career to show that such agreements are routine. He recalled a manager asking him to sign a document quarantining the radio station from any lawsuit arising from his programs — a request he thought perfectly reasonable and agreed to on the spot.
He set it against the era when 2GB paid Alan Jones around $4 million a year but, lacking such an agreement, wore some $8 million in legal costs. A company, Jeremy argued, is entitled to say: do your thing, but we won’t pay the bill at the end. The same logic, he suggested, fits a football club and its players exactly.
Where It’s Headed
Jeremy predicted the pressure will soon force mandatory protective headgear in the AFL, as in gridiron — even if, as Pete noted, players reckon it looks stupid. But even that, he warned, might not shield the game from an unimaginable future liability.
His conclusion was firm: let informed adults strike their own bargains. A player who chooses to waive future claims in return for a career and millions of dollars is, in Jeremy’s view, exercising a right — not being taken advantage of.
Listen To The Full Episode
Catch the complete Garage edition of The Court of Public Opinion, recorded live around the dining room table.
Watch The Full Episode
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