Updated ,first published
Experienced AFL club psychologist Jacqui Louder says capping spending on medical services is putting the care of players at risk, and that Carlton have been “hung out to dry” over their handling of Elijah Hollands.
Louder, who spent eight seasons at Collingwood before stepping away from a formal role in the AFL this season, said she felt compelled to provide the perspective of someone who had worked directly with players in similar situations to the ones the Blues have faced with Hollands.
Her comments came as Carlton’s investigation of the Hollands incident continued. The review is likely to reveal the complexity of the 23-year-old’s situation, with AFL, club and external experts all involved in his care at different times over the past two years.
“There is a club being hung out to dry here and no one is applauding them for all the work they have done for three years to keep a career alive for this young man,” Louder said.
“Everyone is happy to talk about mental health but the psychs are at the [coalface]. Every single day is a fight for us.”
Louder said the AFL’s mental health team and psychologists at the AFL Players’ Association network did an outstanding job for players, but the debate should be focused on the system rather than the Blues.
“The system is capping medical services,” Louder said.
“When you are working within a system that is capping how much you can pay your professionals then you are automatically capping how much care [is possible].”
“If you look across the board we have more inexperienced practitioners than ever before … when the system does that, then all of a sudden there are risks and the risk is you can’t be there 24/7, and you can’t have your psych at every single game in every single moment.”
Carlton staff believed they could manage Hollands through his on-field mental health episode last Thursday night – in part because they had done so previously, according to three industry sources.
He experienced a similar episode during the round 10 match against Sydney last year and was able to continue playing.
Carlton have been asked to present their review of why Hollands continued playing to the AFL.
The situation has also raised broader questions about the league’s mental health framework.
Two industry sources said Hollands was, at some point, on a structured treatment plan, reflecting the league’s model of coordinated care involving clubs, clinicians and external support.
The football soft cap for each club is $7.675 million in 2026, with a minimum health care expenditure. There are also limited exemptions for mental health and wellbeing services.
The 2026 cap was announced in June last year after consultation between the AFL, club football departments, coaches and the AFL Coaches’ Association. League CEO Andrew Dillon said at the time the soft cap provided “some guardrails, such that each club can put together a competitive football program”.
“How clubs choose to allocate and spend it across their football department is at their discretion to suit their specific circumstances,” Dillon said. “As part of a commitment to continue to prioritise player health and safety, the Soft Cap Healthcare Model remains in place to ensure minimum standards in healthcare resourcing are set across the competition and ensure equitable access to healthcare providers.”
The league also developed an AFL and AFLW player mental healthcare road map, which sees a range of centrally funded programs – including an AFL mental health network and players’ association mental health navigation service. The league also established a mental health and wellbeing unit.
Louder sat on the bench during Collingwood matches and said all clubs faced difficult decisions managing players’ mental health during training, games or throughout the year.
“Every single day for the psychs and medicos in the system, there is so much stuff you never see come out on the field because we are the legs under the water trying to keep [a player’s] privacy, trying to keep their respect and trying to keep this off the field,” Louder said.
“On one occasion, sadly, it was on the field, and now they are all jumping up [and down].”
Hollands’ brother Ollie thanked Carlton for their support in an emotional social media message about Elijah.
Louder said punishing a club was not the way to address the issues that have arisen after Hollands stayed on the field until deep in the last quarter despite erratic behaviour and having had one possession.
“You don’t punish when no one has done anything deliberately wrong. I would be so confident there is no club who is going to knowingly put their players at risk but every single day there are so many moving parts. On game day and on every day we are doing the best we can,” she said.
“You don’t know what you are seeing sometimes. You have got to sometimes watch something play out to go, ‘is this or is this not [OK]’, because if we do it and pull them off the ground then we have maybe created more of an issue.”
Louder said the incident should be a chance for industry to improve the system.
“[I would] like to see a real, genuine respect for [AFL head of mental health] Kate Hall and the mental health team and the wider mental health community in sport and the practitioners. We can have some really robust discussions about creating change, not just discussions but let’s create change and give us the power and the resources to do it.”
Although the notion of a mental health round was well-meaning and not without merit Louder said the priority should be to ensure the systems underpinning such a promotion were adequate.
“What does that represent and what do we put around that round to make the message valuable? You can’t chuck a round on with a title and say, ‘That’s it, job done’,” Louder said.
Louder said it was hard for practitioners to listen to football experts within the media discuss mental health without, she suspects, always having the required knowledge for informed commentary.
She emphasised it was not a criticism of the media but a cry for people to use the Hollands situation as impetus for better understanding.
Louder said she would like the media to receive mental health first aid training as part of the accreditation process.
While she understood the need for media to scrutinise clubs and the AFL, she would also like to see respect for players when a club is open about the fact they are unavailable due to mental health issues.
“We all need each other,” Louder said. “Elijah [has been] brave to keep putting himself forward.”
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Sam McClure is an award-winning AFL journalist and broadcaster.Connect via X or email.
