The revolutionary headgear that could be a game-changer in fight against concussion
The developers of the Gamegear helmet, which Manly’s Jake Trbojevic will wear during pre-season, believe it can drastically reduce the effects of head impacts – and will invest $1m in a trial to prove it.
The developers of new protective headgear designed for contact sports believe it can be a game-changer that will dramatically reduce the risk of athletes suffering concussions.
And they are so confident their product, Gamegear helmets, can revolutionise player safety that they are set to invest $1 million in a medical field trial to verify its effectiveness.
Manly’s Jake Trbojevic is trialling the Gamegear helmet during the pre-season.Credit: Joel Seeto, Manly Media
In the words of Gamegear inventor Graeme Attey: “We want to do for contact sports what seatbelts did for road safety.”
Attey, a 71-year-old industrial designer from Perth, has spent more than four decades developing award-winning, patented products, including air-conditioning and refrigeration systems, wind turbines, “foil” stand-up paddleboards, two-wheel inline skateboards and guitars partially made from carbon fibre.
He turned his attention to protective headgear after seeing two AFL players knocked unconscious by a head clash during a game in 2012.
“I thought, ‘This is ridiculous, I want to do something about this’,” Attey recalled. “So I sat down and started doing sketches. And over the course of the next few years, I eventually got my first helmet design into production, but it didn’t really have any noticeable impact, or it was ignored.
Jake Trbojevic after suffering his third serious concussion of 2025 against Canberra.Credit: Getty Images
“A few years went past and I was still thinking about how I could make it better … I came up with this version four or five years ago, but the last three years I’ve been flat out full-time on it.”
Attey developed what he named a “nodal-impact attenuation” (NIA) design, which the Gamegear website describes as “a unique new impact-absorption system, consisting of a series of spheres located at the nodes of a geometric lattice. As a ball or sphere compresses, the resistance to compression is initially low, then smoothly and exponentially increases thereafter, resulting in progressive deceleration of impacts, and the ability to roll with angular impacts”.
