The Australian Football League’s recent mandate requiring all AFL and AFLW clubs to employ full-time in-house psychologists has sparked mixed reaction from two veteran senior coaches, who have raised practical and financial concerns over the new rule.
The regulation was introduced as a key disciplinary sanction against Carlton Football Club, stemming from the controversial Elijah Hollands incident that brought club mental health support protocols under intense scrutiny. AFL chief executive Andrew Dillon and executive Laura Kane formally announced the policy change earlier this week, with additional implementation details promised for release in the coming weeks.
Western Bulldogs head coach Luke Beveridge has publicly questioned the logic behind the strict full-time requirement, noting that his club’s existing psychologist already works a near-full-time schedule dedicated to player welfare. In comments to reporters, Beveridge said he remains confused by the wording of the new mandate, pointing to the disjointed, travel-heavy nature of the AFL competition that makes a rigid full-time role structure difficult to implement. “What happens in an AFL environment is we all take care of the players’ welfare,” Beveridge explained. “I think the empowerment of staff and the playing group to support each other is absolutely critical, and a skilled practitioner like our club psychologist Andrew Waterson is absolutely critical to any organisation. But it’s also your senior high performance management that needs to continue to oversee that and make sure everyone’s empowered to look after each other.”
Beyond the full-time psychologist rule, Beveridge also hit out at the AFL’s updated illicit drug policy, which bars club coaching staff from being informed when a player returns a positive drug test. He argued that this restriction directly undermines the quality of care clubs can provide to at-risk athletes, as coaches are left unable to address underlying mental health struggles that may be tied to substance use.
For his part, Essendon senior coach Brad Scott centered his criticism on the financial burden the new mandate places on already cash-strapped clubs. Scott called on the AFL to either fully fund the new full-time psychology positions or exempt their salaries from the existing club soft salary cap, arguing the league’s inconsistent financial rules create unnecessary strain for club management.
“There’s this complex formula of exemptions that the AFL deem are more important than others. Whether that be setting a minimum spend for medical, setting a minimum spend for mental health and wellbeing,” Scott said. “Personally, it gets very frustrating when the AFL are reactive to something and decide you must spend on this after cutting the soft cap and dictating what we can and can’t do with our money. Clubs get held responsible, as Carlton have been in this case, and then the AFL come over the top and mandate things. It’s been a constant challenge that soft caps have been cut and clubs are forced to decide where to allocate money, then the AFL have an incident and respond like this.”
The new mandate marks the AFL’s latest attempt to strengthen player mental health support across both the men’s and women’s competitions, but the pushback from two high-profile senior coaches signals ongoing debate over how best to structure welfare resources while balancing the operational constraints of individual clubs.