The Australian Football League must introduce a policy around chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) and change its culture around concussions to better protect players, experts have told an inquiry.
About 80 players are diagnosed with concussion each season in the AFL and AFLW.
The league's medical chief said while concussion guidelines are in place, official policies are also needed to improve health outcomes for players, given the link between repetitive head trauma and CTE.
"We need to have a policy to show how seriously we take CTE in our sport," Michael Makdissi told a Senate inquiry into the issue on Wednesday.
He said the AFL needed to work more closely with the AFL Players Association to address concussions.
"I've seen quite a shift in (the) culture, I don't think we're there yet," Dr Makdissi said.
"We need some continued education."
In March, Margalit Injury Lawyers lodged a landmark class action against the AFL in the Supreme Court of Victoria.
The Victorian law firm is seeking compensation for injuries caused to former players by the impact of concussion for pain and suffering, economic loss and medical expenses.
Managing principal Michel Margalit called for a fix to the "gaping hole" in the current compensation scheme.
"We implore state and federal governments to implement an adequate worker's compensation scheme to cover employees injured in professional sports," she told the hearing.
In a written submission, a former football executive said he feels ashamed and distressed watching sporting bodies fail to protect players from concussion.
John Hennessy, a former Victorian Football League corporate planner who helped steer the development of the national AFL competition in the 1980s, labelled the concussion crisis a "national disgrace" in his written submission to the Senate committee probe into the issue.
What's more, it was embarrassing the solutions to fix it were quite achievable, he said.
"The most important possession anyone has is their brain," Mr Hennessy wrote in the submission.
"At the moment we are not adequately protecting it when playing sport. Children, in particular, are at high risk.
"We are gambling with people's lives."
Mr Hennessy is among witnesses slated to give evidence at the public hearings of the inquiry.
The AFL, the AFL Players Association, Cricket Australia and medical professionals are also giving evidence on Wednesday, along with law firms Griffins Lawyers and Margalit Injury Lawyers, which have each launched class actions against the AFL over concussion-related injuries.
Mr Hennessy pointed to soaring rates of concussion and hospitalisations in junior football, increasing rates of concussion in the AFL competition and ongoing problems for thousands of past players facing inadequate support as they dealt with mental health issues and early-onset neurodegenerative diseases.
The AFL, in its written submission to the inquiry, acknowledged head trauma appeared to be associated with an increased risk of neurodegenerative disease.
But it said the association between head trauma and long-term psychological health was less clear, given depression and anxiety - common symptoms of traumatic brain injuries - were also common in the general community.
The AFL pointed to its five-year concussion strategic plan as among ways it was addressing the risk, along with guidelines that addressed the need for a more conservative approach when it came to children and adolescents.
Cricket Australia told the inquiry it was reviewing its existing policies around concussions with updates expected in coming months regarding players who experience multiple head knocks each year.
CA's head of sports science and medicine, Alex Kountouris, said there are an estimated 20 concussions a year across 300 players.
"It's not a common occurrence," Mr Kountouris told the inquiry.