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I know, I know. Me wringing my hands over the fate of leaguies' brains gets right up your nose, and you and Phil Gould think I should stop whinging that the NRL should go one step beyond having a protocol on the treatment of players suffering concussion and serious injuries, and actually observe it.
You think that if the do-gooders and the doctors and lawyers and mothers and men with no-hair-on-their-chests get their hands on rugby league, there'll be no game left to roar at.
That at least, was the theme of many of the comments below I piece I wrote on Thursday where I opined – stay with me on this one, 'cos it's a stretch – that when a man gets so badly hit in the head by another man's flying head that it subsequently requires surgery to put in four face-plates and he is by his own admission badly concussed he can't remember anything afterwards, maybe he should have been medically assessed on the spot by an independent authority as to whether or not he was fit to continue?
You know, as if the player's welfare is actually important, and not something you just glibly say in press conferences afterwards? I said that while I loved watching that grand final for all the power and the passion and the big hits, my fear is that in years to come, I will feel how I do now whenever I see footage of the shambling wreck of a man that is Muhammad Ali.
For I loved watching Ali box, too. Most of us did. And yet it was our love of watching him engage in that brutal sport for so long that turned him into the tragically punch-drunk figure he is today.
How did we ever think Ali could take that kind of constant impact on his brain and not pay a price? We loved him to death, to near brain-death. I don't say Sam Burgess will turn into Ali.
I do say that he, and all of us who played football for a long time, will have to pay a price for whatever concussions we suffered and as in the modern era some of those consequences are now known, all football codes have a moral and legal duty to seriously get to grips with minimising and managing it – with removing players from the field who have suffered it, and not putting them back out there.
Both Sam Burgess and his brother George were clearly concussed and allowed to play on. The Crazy Brave head-first style of tackling of Bulldogs prop James Graham created carnage, and went entirely unpunished.
One player out there, Kyle Turner, had suffered six concussions in the last year, and was there with the NRL's blessing. What might have happened if the head-first hit Graham put on Burgess had been done on Turner? Would he be awake yet? Would he wake,ever?
You think I shouldn't call all that for what it is – MADNESS – because it might get in the way of your entertainment. I don't give a rats'.
It is madness, potentially lethal madness, and the true tragedy of it is will probably take a death, or a massive legal suit, before the NRL actually takes its own protocol seriously. I ask again: what would have happened if James Graham's head had hit Turner's?
And the match itself?
South Sydney's victory in the grand final? Loved it. One of the great games of football, judged on atmosphere, sense of history, drama, skill and unknown result right until the last 10 minutes of the game. But there's a problem, Houston, and it's a big one. It was about the sheer brutality of the match. Have we ever seen the like?
smh.com.au