TWO minutes into injury-time in Healy Park last Sunday, Sean Cavanagh came charging towards the Mayo goal.
He was met square on by the imposing figure of Tom Parsons, who set him back with a hefty shoulder.
In itself, nothing untoward.
But imagine it had been Cillian O’Connor who had taken that hit two minutes later.
The Mayo forward was allowed to play out the final 70 seconds of the game after taking a heavy belt to the head from the stray arm of Tyrone sub Harry Loughran.
O’Connor visibly stumbled as he tried to get to his feet, falling back to his hands and knees before groggily regathering himself.
In the deepest throes of injury-time with a one-point lead to hang on to, O’Connor shrugged off the concern of his team-mate Parsons.
The on-field assessment by the doctor was only allowed by O’Connor to last a matter of seconds as the Ballintubber forward headed back into the defensive line to help his side hang on for victory.
It was one of two worrying incidents that occurred over the weekend in Gaelic games.
In hurling, Kilkenny's Padraig Walsh took a high-speed, point-blank sliotar to the side of the helmet in 7th minute. He played on for almost a full half-hour, before he was withdrawn at half-time to go for an X-ray, after which he was discharged with bruising.
They happened because the rules allowed them to happen.
The GAA does not have rules regarding the treatment of head injuries and suspected concussions.
Instead, it has guidelines. Those guidelines say that any player feared to have sustained a concussion should be immediately removed from the field of play.
Two years ago, the GAA’s Medical, Scientific and Welfare (MSW) committee were tasked with investigating the idea of introducing a temporary substitute in the result of suspected concussion.
But rather than introduce it and implement a rule whereby Head Injury Assessments, similar to those in rugby, would be carried out on players suspected of being concussed, the committee recommended that the current guidelines remain in place.
The idea of taking anyone who is at all suspected of having a concussion off the field of play straight away is not one that would work in GAA.
The sight of a player being hauled off 10 minutes into an All-Ireland final to discover later that there was no concussion is not a road you could conceivably go down.
However, a set of guidelines that says players must be signed off by a doctor before returning to play is a flawed one. Even the IRFU, with its huge resources, don’t ask for that.
There are a limited number of GPs out there that are fully trained in dealing with brain injuries, which concussion is. And no GP will sign off on something they won’t stand over.
The guidelines are materially flawed. And if the guidelines are flawed and there is no rule, then really what is there?
Take the Cillian O’Connor incident as indicative of how an on-field assessment is conducted.
Tyrone and Mayo played as if it was a Championship game. The win mattered to Mayo especially, given their precarious position in the table.
Was Cillian O’Connor’s concern whether he had a concussion or not?
Was Stephen Rochford’s concern whether he had a concussion or not?
Or was their concern the same as every other manager and player in Ireland would have been faced with a similar situation in a big game?
It’s hard to consider your own welfare as a player in that white heat. You just don’t. From Rory O’Carroll in an All-Ireland final to Brian O’Driscoll against the All Blacks, history tells us that emphatically.
It’s hard for a manager to make a conscious decision above a footballing one. They are human beings with their lives invested in this.
It's easy to criticise and say that the player's life is literally at stake if a bad decision is made. That is true. But that responsibility belongs to people other than football managers.
And it is impossible for a doctor to properly assess whether a player has, or crucially may develop, a concussion in that pressurised on-field scenario, with the crowd and the TV cameras glaring and a referee hanging over you looking to restart the game.
That is why you take it out of the hands of players and managers, and you allow the medical professionals the space and time they need to make an informed and proper decision on the player’s welfare.
Because the current situation is extremely dangerous to players and extremely unfair to doctors.
That is why rugby has its Head Injury Assessments (HIA) policy, where players are temporarily replaced until a diagnosis can be made.
There is a difference, of course. Doctors in rugby deal with incidents of concussion more than any other injury.
Even it is struggling for a deep enough well of fully trained medical professionals capable of making Head Injury Assessments during games.
It would be impossible for the GAA to have a fully qualified, independent doctor at every game.
But the doctors that are involved with inter-county teams are currently under no obligation to arm themselves with the necessary training and information required to assess head injuries.
In rugby, club doctors are required to attend a pre-hospital trauma course every two years, with a refresher every year in between. There is nothing to stop the GAA from going down that route.
Taking the player off the pitch also allows time for symptoms to develop. That can take minutes. It can take days. No system is going to catch every single incident.
When Martin Loughran was physio at Jordanstown, he had a player on day 3 of the return-to-play protocols he abides by when the symptoms manifested themselves.
Doing a cognitive drills session, where a player reacts by turning to calls of left or right, or different colours or numbers, his subject vomited.
It wasn’t the intensity of the session, but the impact that it had on his blood pressure and ultimately his brain.
Vomiting is one thing, but the key danger in allowing players to continue without proper assessment is second-impact syndrome.
It occurs when a person hasn’t fully recovered from an initial concussion, of which even the mildest grade can cause death, as it did tragically to Ben Robinson, a 14-year-old rugby player from Carrickfergus who died in 2011.
He had been momentarily knocked out at the start of the second half of a schools’ rugby match but carried on before collapsing near the end of the game, having been involved in further heavy tackles.
It is a very real and growing danger in the GAA. It was a very real danger to Cillian O'Connor when he played on on Sunday afternoon.
Tyrone led by a very good example earlier in the year when they sat Mattie Donnelly out of their League clash with Dublin as it was only six days after he’d suffered a bang against Roscommon, as per the GAA's guidelines.
It seemed like a step forward that evening. Ulster Council have worked hard at educating players and clubs through various workshops.
But Sunday was two steps backwards.
It’s time the GAA urgently revisited the idea of concussion sub, taking a potentially life-saving decision away from players and managers and giving those who make it the space to get it right.
