In the first quarter of the first round of the season last year, Wendy Smith’s son Antonio Loiacono took a knock to the head, but kept playing.
“He received a malicious hit in quarter one … it was forceful, he fell to the ground, he wasn’t taken off or assessed. Antonio was tough as boots, kept playing on,” Smith said.
His second concussion of the game proved deadly.
“I knew he was being resuscitated but I thought he was going to be okay.”
Smith is now trying to ensure no other parent has to endure the same grief she has in the last 12 months.
The death rocked the Birdwood Football Club and the wider Aussie rules community.
Shortly after the tragedy, junior president of Port District Football Club Andrew Marks enlisted two parents to create simple guidelines for dealing with head knocks.
The two mums – Sophie Rowe and Rachael Kaye – came up with a QR code system to track concussions the same way other injuries are monitored.
“That’s what people don’t understand, that the next blow could be fatal,” Rowe said.
Team managers can work through a checklist and log player details, which then go into a club database.
“We would track players with their ACL injuries so we would hope that we are normalising this and making this a part of everyday conversation here at Port District Footy Club,” Kaye said.
Medical advice and return to play steps are also sent to parents.
“Although we have only had this going for a couple of months we actually saw there was a pattern in the number of girls that were having concussions,” Kaye said.
Port has shared its system with other clubs but believes it should be implemented across the board.
“I would like to see nationally that there’s a register … because kids play different sports for school so they might get a concussion at club sport and play at school the following day,” Rowe said.
A national rollout also has the support of Smith, who is raising awareness as a Concussion Foundation ambassador.
“It’s part of my healing and working through my grief … just to raise concussion awareness,” she said.
“For me, I don’t want other people to go through what I did.”
Her 20-year-old son left his own legacy, having saved six lives through organ donation and bequeathing his brain to the Australian Brain Bank.
“He really is the gift that keeps on giving even though he isn’t here.”
