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Jordan Woolnough was jumping over the boundary fence of a cricket oval in Doreen, to Melbourne’s north, in February 2022 when he caught his foot, lost his balance and fell to the ground.
The 23-yr-old self-employed carpenter and senior cricketer was returning from a warm-up on the Eastern oval to the practice nets. He fell onto his head or neck and suffered serious injuries.
The Whittlesea City Council had installed the new nets in 2020. During the 2021-22 season, the Western oval was unavailable due to renovations, so his club – Laurimar Cricket Club – trained on the Eastern oval and used the new nets.
A pedestrian gate near the pavilion could be reached by walking around the fence to a gate that was about 95 m to the nets, compared to a distance of about 41 m from the the point in the fence where players usually jumped over it.
It emerged that the shortcut had become the normal practice with roughly 75 to 90 per cent of players climbing or jumping the fence at the direct point, while older or injured players were more likely to walk around.
The player – who will use a wheelchair for the rest of his life – sued the Council and the Club. The extent of damages for the catastrophically injured Woolnough were agreed at $19 mil but liability for the accident was hotly contested.
His lawsuit came before Justice James Gorton in the Victorian Supreme Court.
In determining whether the occupier had taken reasonable care in the circumstances, he noted the small risk associated with a fit person jumping a low oval fence and the extent to which such risk accumulated when many people did it repeatedly, week after week, over successive seasons.
He reasoned that the Council should have anticipated that players moving between two pieces of cricket infrastructure would take the direct route and cross the fence if no gate existed.
The Council knew, or ought to have known, that the Club had substantial use of the oval and nets and that people were unlikely to make an appreciable detour each time they moved between them. Gates had been provided at other places where repeated access to an oval was expected. A reasonable council would have installed a pedestrian gate at the relevant location when it built the new nets.
Cost and practicality strengthened that conclusion. The gate later installed after the accident cost about $1,500. There was no identified countervailing risk or social value in requiring cricketers to jump the fence.
Justice Gorton stressed that the Court did not need to predict a catastrophic injury of the kind suffered by Woolnough; the foreseeable aggregate risk included that of less serious falls, sprains, bruises and fractures.
Not to be outdone, the Council contended that, even if it had been negligent and its negligence was a cause of the injury, it was not liable to pay damages on the grounds that the player – by choosing to traverse the fence – had voluntarily assumed the risk of his falling and injuring himself while doing so.
That submission was rejected as Woolnough could not be taken to have freely accepted the full extent of the risk, i.e. one of very serious injury; even though he would be taken to have accepted the risk of a lesser injury which was obvious.
Woolnough did, however, bear some responsibility. Eyewitness testimony that he ran at the fence and attempted to vault it led to a finding that such conduct was careless. He was attributed contributory negligence to the extent of 20%.
Woolnough obtained judgment against the Council for $15.2 million plus costs.
Evidence revealed that the Club had asked the Council in late 2021 for a gate at the Eastern oval because players were climbing or jumping the fence. That was enough for the Club to have acted reasonably and for it to escape responsibility. The player’s claim against the Club was dismissed and he was ordered to pay its costs.
Woolnough v Whittlesea City Council & Anor [2026] VSC 190 Gorton J, 7 April 2026 & 11 June 2026
Categories: sport injury