Footy star’s compo bid
Pies flag coach chases lump sum for ‘permanent impairment’
A FORMER Brisbane Lions player and Tasmanian State League star is fighting to claim more compensation from the football club he was playing for when he injured himself in a game and almost lost his leg.
Aaron Cornelius was playing for Glenorchy in August 2014 when he was lucky not to lose his leg after a heavy fall.
Cornelius had been getting weekly compensation payments from Glenorchy following the incident, but has now filed for a lump-sum payment for permanent impairment.
A FORMER Brisbane Lions player and Tasmanian State League star is fighting to claim more compensation from the football club he was playing for when he injured himself in a game and almost lost his leg.
Tasmanian Aaron Cornelius was playing for Glenorchy Football Club in August 2014 when he was lucky not to lose his leg after a heavy fall in a match against Clarence at Bellerive.
The former Brisbane Lion dislocated his left knee and badly damaged arteries, other blood vessels and nerves in his leg.
He initially lost blood flow below the knee, which doctors feared may have to be amputated, and lost feeling in the limb from the knee down.
Unable to play and following multiple operations, Cornelius went on to coach Glenorchy to a flag in 2016.
The Workers Rehabilitation and Compensation Tribunal of Tasmania recently published a decision made in relation to Cornelius’s case which details his compensation claim.
Now aged 29, Cornelius had been receiving weekly compensation payments from the Glenorchy Football Club following the incident, but has now filed for a lump-sum payment for permanent impairment.
The tribunal heard the doctor for the club had assessed Cornelius’s impairment as being 24 per cent “whole person impairment,” compared with Cornelius’s doctor who had assessed a whole person impairment of 33 per cent.
The tribunal heard the footy club had paid the lump sum compensation to the value of a whole person impairment of 24 per cent, but Cornelius was claiming the remaining 9 per cent.
After leaving Glenorchy, Cornelius signed a contract with the Southport Football Club in Queensland at the end of 2017 and he remained as an independent contractor for the club during 2018.
This year he has been working at Box Hill Hawks in the Victorian Football League, a feeder club to AFL side Hawthorn.
“He has taken a pay cut to move from Southport to Box Hill, but he has done so because he says Hawthorn is a highly regarded football club which has, in recent years, produced seven senior coaches at AFL level,” tribunal chief commissioners Robert Webster wrote in his decision. “As part of his duties at Box Hill he spends one day per week at Hawthorn.
“I understood from what I was told, [he] would remain at Box Hill if he was recontracted, but that was not certain. He may therefore be without income from employment once the 2019 season ends.”
Cornelius was ordered to provide evidence of his earnings for the past two years to progress the lump sum compensation claim and ensure he had not been overpaid for the weekly payments.
Aaron Cornelius