George, it’s time to retire
The Wales winger’s latest concussion should be the end of his career.
Please, George, it is time to stop.
Don’t play for Northampton again, a club that treats you like a battery hen. Don’t play for Wales in the Six Nations. Don’t be tempted by the Lions and come to New Zealand.
Do you remember the Lions tour of Australia? Well, do you? Some of it might be a bit fuzzy now. There was a moment in the second test when big Israel Folau went in for the tackle and you carried him five metres backwards. The crowd roared. But as you went down in a heap, your head was driven into the ground and your neck compressed.
People have been paralysed by far less. You said you had been ‘‘tombstoned right on my head like a wrestling move.’’ And you weren’t allowed to watch wrestling by your mum as a kid because she thought it was too violent. What about the violence you are doing to your brain?
Last weekend in the match between Leicester and Northampton, you jumped for a ball and were tipped in the air.
You landed on your head. Again. And lay there, prone, arms splayed, that same ‘dead’ position I remember from the ghastly match against England, not moving. The lights were out.
Now you might not remember a lot of this, but you were escorted off the pitch. And then you were escorted back on again. And you played the rest of the match. No, you really did, I’m not making this stuff up.
You see the doctors did something called a Head Injury Assessment. And after asking a few quick questions and asking you to stand on one leg and the like, they decided there was no evidence of concussion.
‘‘What?’’, you might ask, and I am with you here. The other week an American called Dr Michael Collins, an expert in these things, said the HIA was a waste of time. He said they had kids who often didn’t present symptoms until the bus ride home in a ‘‘demanding vestibular environment.’’
Asked if athletes should be removed from the field rather than do an HIA, the doc said, ‘‘Unequivocally.’’
Yes, these long words make my head hurt too. Look, I don’t know if you saw the England game against Argentina the other week. In the third minute Jonny May’s shoulder crunched into the head of Juan Martin Hernandez. And down he went, clutching his head. You know how that feels.
After a minute he went off to do a Head Injury Assessment and a few minutes later, hey presto, Hernandez was back, apparently unharmed. Well they do call him ‘el mago’, the magician.
Only the magic had gone. No sooner was Hernandez back on, he missed touch from a penalty and then threw a pass to Owen Farrell who, if memory serves, is not an Argentinian. Hernandez dropped the ball in the tackle and England got a penalty try. He threw passes along the ground. He held his head after one kick. And get this, one restart from the halfway line didn’t even go forwards, but floated behind him like a sick bluebird.
And the commentators mocked him. ‘‘Strange things happen when you’re a magician,’’ they said. More of ‘‘an ugly rabbit’’ they said. ‘‘He needs to get his head back in the game,’’ they said.
I’m with you, don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Everyone’s looking the other way.
Northampton said they saw nothing. Not the pitchside medics. Not the spotter in the stand. They didn’t see you spark out on the pitch, they didn’t see the replays on the big screen, they didn’t see the incident on the replay feed on their laptops.
By the way, BT Sport, who pay $266 million over five years to cover this stuff, called the claim extraordinary. Still your director of rugby said, ‘‘He wasn’t knocked out, he was fine.’’ So that’s good news. You’re fine. And the ref JP Doyle let you play on, so all good.
There are many journalists, myself included, who have spent years trying to get rugby to realise the dark tunnel of horror that repeated concussions can send you down.
But you know that. You were slurring your words. Couldn’t wash up the dishes without getting a blinding pain behind the eyes. Your girlfriend Becky was worried sick. Literally. What if you have a family?
But Warren Gatland’s got your back, or your head, this time. He says you need ‘‘to forget about playing for Northampton at the moment and Wales in the Six Nations’’. I wish he had added the Lions to that list.
By the way how many concussions have you had? We know about the one against New Zealand and the two against England and the one against Wasps, after which a neurosurgeon stood you down for six months, and the one against Leicester. But what about all the knocks as a kid and the ones in training? I mean just how many have there been?
You tweeted after last week’s game, ‘‘I am OK.’’
Are you definite about that? Even the brain boffins aren’t sure about these things.
I know I cannot begin to imagine what it must be like to run out in front of 70,000 people or to wear a Lions shirt. But I have seen long term victims of concussion, mighty warriors full of rage and empty of words.
It is too sad. For them, for their wives, for their children, for their family.
So please, please get out while you still have a chance. Set us all an example.