Ken Hinkley

So I think the reality is that going forward, it'll be a safer place for AFL players and for AFL staff, not just players, because mental health is a full, broad, unfortunately, across the whole of the competition, the whole of the public.

So my reality is the good that comes from this, and that's what we should look towards, is what good can come from it, is that it's going to be a safer place for everyone to work and be involved in AFL football, which in some ways, Gerard, is a little late to the party.

Well, everything was compromised for a start, not just care and mental health.

I mean, everything got compromised, whether it be coaches, whether it be, you know, any type of skill development coaching that you were trying to do, whether it would be some, you know, I've spoken about this publicly with some of the Indigenous boys and stuff, to compromise what you can draft and not draft and the care that you needed to put around all sorts of things.

The soft cap reductions were obviously needed

in COVID, but they just lasted too long.

I mean, they absolutely lasted too long.

If you look through the rest of the competition, nothing else was affected as much as the soft cap in the coaching departments, and everyone was left bemused as to why.

Well, we want our game to be the absolute best it can possibly be, yet we weren't allowing...

our coaching departments, our medical departments, our conditioning departments, anything to do with performance, I think the right to be as good as we could have been because of the cutback in costings.

I mean, it makes not a lot of sense to me that the executive at AFL House was back at top

on their brackets.

Everything else was in the football clubs, were back at the level they were pre-COVID, but the only part that was held up and still held up in some ways has been the soft cap for coaching departments.

That has a massive effect and a flow-on effect into all spaces, Gerard, not just, like everyone thinks about how many coaches you can get out there and coaches are overpaid, but

The things that we do and have done in coaching is a far bigger product than just X's and O's.

We spend an enormous amount of time on wellbeing.

We spend an enormous amount of time on health and mental health.

We spend an enormous amount of time on connection with players, which they crave today.

People don't realise...

what the young people today really crave.