00:00Football is in Jason Cloak's blood. Since leaving the AFL two decades ago he's played
00:09in a range of leagues, most recently Queensland's Masters League, but a year ago he hung up his
00:14boots. From my dad I've always loved football, it's something we love, it's been the hardest
00:1812 months not playing football. The 43 year old says he's been hospitalised more than
00:25a dozen times as a result of being injured in amateur football games. He says an off-play
00:30hit was the final straw and that ex-AFL players are often targeted, even by umpires.
00:36Who's going to police the game if the umpires are the ones telling you you're a has-been and
00:40can't stand your family and hated you playing Collingwood? I hate Collingwood. I'll never
00:44give you a free kick. That's local footy. Former West Coast Eagles player Adam Hunter, who died
00:49earlier this year, faced similar physical and verbal abuse when he returned to play country football.
00:55I think it's a bit of a tall poppy syndrome. Um, you get that, that, that person that just
01:01wants to say that, you know, I punched Adam Hunter. Unlike Cloak, Hunter couldn't bring
01:06himself to give it up. A posthumous brain examination shows the Premiership player had been suffering
01:11from chronic traumatic encephalopathy, which research shows is linked to repeated head knocks.
01:16Yeah, he should have retired but he, he just loved the game that much. He just wanted to play.
01:21The game was his last game. Former Essendon captain Dyson Heppel knows how difficult it
01:26can be to walk away.
01:27There was nothing that will ever replace the feeling of running out in front of a hundred
01:31thousand fans. This next period is going to be difficult because, you know, it's everything
01:36that I've known for my entire life, um, is now finished.
01:39While he's back playing in the VFL, he says time away from the game helped.
01:43Just going footy, footy's not everything. Um, knowing there's so much more to life.
01:47It's something 43-year-old Cloak is coming to terms with.
01:51Do you think you will ever go back to playing cookie?
01:56At the moment, no. Um, not at all. I just want the leagues to start to take some responsibility
02:04for it now.
02:05The ABC's spoken to a number of leagues that say they're cracking down on aggressive
02:10behaviour and want to see more AFL players returning to local leagues without feeling
02:14like they have a target on their back.
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