Fremantle star Emma O’Driscoll reveals emotional toll of suffering first concussion just months after brother Aiden’s forced retirement

So two in the space of a few months threatened to unravel them.

In May, youngest sibling Aiden was forced to retire on medical grounds shortly after he was drafted by the Western Bulldogs. The 18-year-old suffered a significant head injury at a pre-season training session in January that required intervention from the AFL’s independent concussion panel. His career was over before it began.

It left Fremantle pair Nathan (22) and Emma (24) to live out Aiden’s dream. But in a sickening twist, the latter was concussed for the first time in her career earlier this month.

Speaking for the first time since the incident that forced her to miss Fremantle’s practice match against West Coast, O’Driscoll revealed that Aiden was first on the scene, picking her up from the club later that day in a state of distress.

“We were doing match sim in one of our training sessions and I ended up clashing heads with a teammate,” she said. “I got thrown about three metres.

“I didn’t get knocked out but I felt the effects of it after.

“For me, it wasn’t actually the concussion itself and the symptoms, but I had a bit of PTSD from what happened earlier this year with Aiden.

“It was really tough. Aiden was the one who actually had to come and pick me up from the club. All that anxiety and built-up emotion from his situation really took hold.”

O’Driscoll and her family spent the next few days trying to reprocess the trauma that had barely settled since Aiden’s shock diagnosis. If one head knock was all it took to end his career, then there was a nauseating possibility that lightning could strike twice.

“It made me catastrophise a bit,” Emma admitted. “I was worried that it was going to affect me for months or even years.

“Am I going to need a scan like Aiden? Am I going to get the same news? But that wasn’t the case.

“Aiden’s was very rare. But for me, it was so real because I’ve seen it happen first-hand.

“I’m a different person. I’ve got my medical advice. It’s different to my brother’s situation. But I also know that I can relate to Aiden a bit more now in the sense that I’ve never had a head knock before and my personal experience can help me support his recovery.

It didn’t make that first week any less harrowing as the family were forced to relive the day Aiden announced his premature retirement.

“I was very emotional for a week or so there trying to process that information,” she said. “Prior to that, it’s not like we’d brushed it off but we had to move forward and help him move forward so I don’t think we processed it fully ourselves.

“Seeing my youngest brother so vulnerable in front of his teammates, announcing his retirement so maturely at the age of 18, I will never understand how tough that was. It’s something I’ll never forget and it’s given me so much courage.

“When I did get hit, all of those emotions from that day flooded back to me. We need to take head injuries so seriously.

“I wasn’t just worried about my health at the time but I was worried about my brother and what his future looks like after being told that he has a significant brain injury and can never play contact sport again.”

O’Driscoll also had to confront her preconceived idea of what it meant to be concussed. The symptoms she thought she’d experience never arrived and she didn’t realise how much it was impacting her until she’d fully recovered.

“Everyone asks you if you have a headache,” she said. “I didn’t have a headache at all.

“I just didn’t feel right. I didn’t feel like myself. I didn’t feel motivated. I didn’t want to get out of bed. I felt like I was in a fog and fatigued.

“It felt like that moment right before you’re about to get sick when you feel lethargic and not right. I wasn’t able to give 100 per cent.

“Looking back now in retrospect is where I really noticed that I wasn’t well. Last week I was thinking ‘I’m alright, I can go to training, whatever.’ Now I realise how much it did affect me and how crook I actually was.

Aiden was the last O’Driscoll to be drafted and his siblings reckon that he was the best of a talented bunch. Emma was the first, joining Fremantle in the 2019 AFLW draft after growing up a netballer. Last year she was named in her first AFLW All-Australian side. While Nathan is in the midst of his fourth season as a Docker.

Emma has come to terms with the guilt she initially felt playing football when her brother can no longer do the same. Now, she’s determined to honour Aiden’s legacy as one of a growing list of AFL careers lost to concussion.

“My brother has had his dream ripped away from him and I get an opportunity to come to football five times a week, lace my boots up and play with my sisters,” she said. “I’m going to give it everything every time I go out there.

“I’m not undermining the fact that I had a head knock but perspective is so important.”

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“Every rep in the gym that I can’t be bothered doing, I’m going to do it because my brother can’t anymore. Nathan and I are both AFL footballers so we’re now living that dream for Aiden.

“At the start, I felt guilty because I never dreamt of being a footballer but I get to and he doesn’t. Now, I’ve flipped that around.

“He’d want me to go out there and give 100 per cent because he’s never going to be able to do that.”