‘I can’t trust anybody in this system’: AFL review into concussion study leaves players and experts disappointed

For Katherine Tuck, the widow of star AFL player Shane, the wait for answers on her husband's death has been interminable.

Tuck took his own life in 2020 following his 173-game career with the Richmond football club.

After his death, he was found to have had a severe case of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), the neurodegenerative disease associated with concussion and the repeated heavy impacts of playing contact sport. Tuck's was the worst case of CTE the Australian Sports Brain Bank had ever seen.

But the coronial inquest into his death at age 38 was delayed until July 2023, so that the findings of a review by the AFL into Associate Prof Paul McCrory, one of its primary concussion experts, could be completed and considered by the coroner.

The findings of that review were handed down this week. And Tuck has been left "bitterly disappointed".

"This report does nothing to allay her concerns," her lawyer, Greg Griffin, told Guardian Australia.

"It was the AFL itself that determined the scope of the matters to be reported upon and it is, despite the undoubted independence of the authors, another version of the AFL playbook, which is to mark its own homework."