The wife of late AFL player Danny Frawley has urged the league to "act now" to prevent the neurodegenerative disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) among its participants.
Frawley — who played 240 senior matches for St Kilda between 1984 and 1995 — died in 2019.
A post-mortem examination of the 56-year-old's brain found he was suffering from CTE, which has been linked to repeated blows to the head.
On Wednesday, Frawley's wife Anita gave evidence to a Senate inquiry probing the management of concussion in contact sport.
Ms Frawley said the AFL could not afford to wait for the results of long-term studies when the association between football and CTE was already known.
"My two eldest daughters have both just got engaged," she said.
"During the happiest moment of their life so far, the incredible sadness that their dad is not here to celebrate with them and to walk them down the aisle is always present.
"Our lives will forever be touched by sadness, even in our happiest times.
"We must act now to reduce the instances of this happening to other families in the future."
Ms Frawley added: "I'm not against them (the AFL). I want them to do something. They're not doing enough and I've stated that before.
"I don't know why, whether it's fear or waiting for someone to do it 10 years down the track.
"But it is time. We've got answers sitting there and we can do things now and it's especially the ones that are suffering at the moment that I really worry about.
"There's probably a hundred or so out there that need help desperately."
Ms Frawley said she had been frightened by the deterioration of her husband's condition just a month before he died.
"I remember standing in our kitchen with fear in my eyes looking at my husband and just thinking, 'I don't know this man and who he is. This is not the man I married,'" she said.
"This is because the Danny I married loved life and lived it to the full."
The AFL has acknowledged the link between repetitive head knocks and CTE, a debilitating disease that was also found in late Richmond player Shane Tuck.
Tuck's sister Renee told the inquiry he had "no quality of life whatsoever" prior to his death in 2020 at age 38.
"We watched him decline over many years but the last two years were probably the most tormenting and traumatising for him," she said.
"Shane had a lot of auditory hallucinations … he slowly ended up on the verge of dementia.
"By the end he lost motor skills, memory. He was very confused. He had two prior attempts at taking his life."
AFL general manager of legal Stephen Meade was asked at the inquiry whether the league should have a CTE policy in place.
Mr Meade said he did not think the AFL needed to have a policy "to show how seriously we take CTE in our sport".
"As I've noted, we have guidelines, research projects, our working groups … all looking at the impacts of concussion and the impacts of CTE," he said.
AFL chief medical officer Michael Makdissi said elite footballers continued to under-report concussions.
Dr Makdissi said about 70 to 80 AFL players in the men's competition were diagnosed with concussion each year.
