The AFL will cap how much contact training clubs can run from the 2027 pre-season, limiting high-intensity contact to 60 minutes a week before Christmas and 120 minutes a week once practice matches begin, the league announced on Monday. The limits answer a recommendation the Victorian State Coroner made in December 2023 at the inquest into former Richmond player Shane Tuck, who died in 2020 and was found after his death to have severe chronic traumatic encephalopathy.
From the start of pre-season until the second week after Christmas, clubs may run 120 minutes of contact training a week, 60 of them at high intensity. In weeks three and four after Christmas the cap rises to 160 minutes with 90 at high intensity, and from week five, including practice matches, to 160 with 120. High-intensity contact cannot be scheduled on consecutive days, and clubs must hand over training vision when the league asks for it. Limits for the AFL home-and-away season and for all AFLW training will follow once the league has reviewed data from the 2026 season.
The league says the caps came out of its own analysis of training loads and concussion. That work found "concussions occurred most commonly in match simulation and small-sided high intensity drills", and "no correlation between volume of contact training and ladder position". Clubs that ran more contact did not finish higher.
“The health and welfare of our players is the AFL's highest priority," Laura Kane, the league's executive general manager for football operations, health and AFLW, said.”
State Coroner John Cain recommended in December 2023 that "the AFL limit the number of contact training sessions players participate in before, during and after the regular season". Tuck played 173 games for Richmond and died in July 2020 aged 38. It has taken the league two years and nine months to turn the recommendation into a rule, and the rule covers only the pre-season for now.
The change arrives with the league under pressure from two directions. Last month it fined Geelong $140,000, including $40,000 that had been suspended, after the club failed to lodge a concussion waiver for Jake Kolodjashnij; the AFL Players' Association chief executive James Gallagher said at the time that "Jake should never have been put in this position". And the Rooke class action, brought on behalf of more than 100 former players from 11 clubs, is listed for trial in the Supreme Court of Victoria from 31 May 2027.
The semi-finals are this weekend. Fremantle host Geelong at Optus Stadium on Friday night and Brisbane meet Adelaide at the Gabba on Saturday. The caps apply when the clubs still standing after this month's grand final return for pre-season.
