We’ll let you in on a little secret. There have been many times over the years we’ve been stuck in some godforsaken outpost reporting on a game that ticks along at a decent lick and offers nothing in the way of replays.
o TV monitor in the press box, no big screen in the stadium, no ref-link in your ear or access to the footage on your laptop.
Like the refs in the old days, before they buddied up with TMOs, something happens in the blink of an eye and you have to make a call, there and then.
Have we wrongly apportioned blame or praise in those circumstances? Only enough to fill one of those containers you see stacked mountain high in dockland. Do we have a plan B? Of course we do! We ring a pal in his sitting room somewhere in the first world and ask him what the hell just happened. Then we report it like we’re all over it like a rash.
Last week we were the man on the couch. There was just one call from a jetlagged pal in Hamilton who needed another pair of eyes on exactly who opened the Irish door to the deeply impressive Zarn Sullivan for the Maori opening try.
Before that of course came the loss of loosehead Jeremy Loughman, before the game had even got out of first gear. Seemingly if you were in the stadium, with no big screen and no TV monitors handy, the prop’s exit from and re-entry to the game was just another run-of-the-mill episode in the soap opera that is concussion. From our perspective it was a lot more than that.
Quickly enough it became clear to anyone watching a replay that Loughman got a ding. When he tried to stand up after the heavy double tackle that brought him to a sudden stop he fell over. As he sat there waiting, perhaps for his senses to return, he looked lost.
This was a disaster on two fronts: for the man himself, to have been removed from the game permanently — or so we thought — so soon; and for his replacement, Cian Healy, for whom the original plan was to feature only in the last quarter. Immediately the prospects for a winning start to the Test series three days later took a dive.
Lo and behold, before you could say: ‘As per World Rugby guidelines there’s no need for a Head Injury Assessment when you have clear evidence of a brain injury,’ Loughman had passed his superfluous HIA and was coming back on the field. If ever you needed more evidence of the uselessness of the HIA as a tool to fight concussion, this was gold-standard stuff.
The silver lining on the cloud was getting Healy off the field. It disappeared in the half-time break when the medical forecast changed again. Having had time and space in the changing room to review what had happened, the Irish management told Loughman his race was run, and sent Healy back out. Sure enough, a bad night got worse when Healy’s game also ended prematurely, departing on the medical cart reserved for those who can’t walk.
Question marks were popping up all over the place. Surely the independent match doctor who agreed to the Irish request to put Loughman through a HIA hadn’t seen the evidence of his ataxia, or else he would have knocked it back? The Irish say they hadn’t seen it either, but felt something was wrong. Moreover, somehow the Doc must have carried out the HIA without anyone tapping him on the shoulder and pointing out what had been obvious to many watching at home.
How could that possibly happen? It was the 2009 Six Nations when Scotland, playing Wales in Murrayfield, had a concussion cluster that caught out their team doctor. The seriousness of the impact for the second victim became clear a few minutes after being clobbered when he reproduced his pre-match meal on the turf. Thereafter, everyone at the top end of the game was alive to the imperative of micro-monitoring combined with medical staff resourcing.
After the Maori game on Wednesday night Andy Farrell said Loughman’s withdrawal had been “a precaution”. No, it was damage limitation. The coach’s words made the unmistakable sound of a stable door being slammed while the clippity clop of the bolting horse’s hooves was still audible.
Later that night the Irish camp had been quick to throw the independent match doctor under the bus, claiming he had access to the video evidence during the HIA, and that, crucially, the first Ireland’s doctor Ciaran Cosgrave had seen of the damning pictures was at half-time, where he immediately took action. But it seems the match-day doc didn’t have the whole picture.
Dr Cosgrave is clearly a busy man on this trip. Forty-one players and 28 support staff, including himself, at kick-off time? Between Covid and other issues it’s been full on over the two games. But the lessons from Murrayfield in 2009, albeit slowly learned, were that it’s not a one-man job. Far from it: Test rugby nowadays has spotters seated pitch-side, with sophisticated technological support, to pick up incidents easily missed by a medic who, like Scotland’s Dr Robson, could be tending another victim at the time.
The Maori game was not a full Test, rather its first cousin. So what supports were available on the night to assist in keeping the players safe? Whatever they were, they didn’t fit into the system that operates in the Aviva Stadium to monitor events on the field.
What about the Irish physios on duty that night — did they have no video record to consult? What about up in the coaches’ box where incidents are analysed almost as they happen to enhance the tactical picture? Can you not imagine someone saying: “Hang on, there’s something here the doc might want to look at.” Would you need a medical degree to express concern over someone who couldn’t stand up under his own steam moments after getting dumped?
Because the game was on New Zealand turf it was up to them to investigate. Unlike the Six Nations, on whose watch Wales’ Tomas Francis was concussed and played on against England last February, they came out quickly with their hands up. Their statement cited a missing link in the video evidence chain. We asked them exactly what that link was, among other things, but got no response.
There would have been relief in the Irish camp at the swift mea culpa by the Kiwis. “It’s above me really,” Andy Farrell said when defending his own outfit’s handling of the crisis. “We try to do our best and that’s what we did. One hundred per cent. What we and our medical staff did was look after Jeremy to the best of our ability, and that will continue.”
But it’s a Whac-A- Mole experience. In Eden Park yesterday the stakes went up again at a ground where the home side haven’t been beaten since 1994.
Given they had lost to Ireland three times in recent years — though not in NZ — there was always going to be an extra edge to it. For head trauma junkies this was a hearty meal: Johnny Sexton failed a HIA, but they hope to send him out again in Dunedin on Saturday because there was no conclusive concussion; Dave Heffernan drove past that turn off and was parked on the bench after a Criteria 1 incident (indications for permanent removal); and Peter O’Mahony, through luck or his own defensive radar, managed to survive an assault from Scott Barrett that should have been a straight red card for the New Zealand back rower.
The Heffernan ding had much in common with Loughman’s experience: buried on his first carry, he looked almost lifeless when trying to present the ball; then he staggered in getting up, but unlike Loughman didn’t fall over.
Quickly he was pulled aside by a medic, but after a consultation on the field played on for another two and a half minutes, during which he scrummaged, cleaned and carried before being called ashore. Mercifully he didn’t make a tackle in that timeframe.
Seemingly there was communication between the Irish medical team and the independent match day doctor over the video evidence, and the latter decided to take the player off.
No need for a HIA, he sat on the bench and under the new guidelines is out for 12 days, taking him out of the frame until the Third Test.
Could Team Ireland not have made the decision to get Heffernan off the field on their own without getting a second opinion, during which time their man was exposed to further potential injury?
Andy Farrell is deeply unconvincing explaining the ins and outs around Ireland’s issues on this front, and never more than yesterday when batting away questions about the wisdom of sending Sexton out again on Saturday.
“You can stumble in your studs, you know, and not go on,” he said, explaining how players can be taken off when not concussed.
Maybe the IRFU should send out the man or woman for whom this is their bread and butter, for if at some point in the future Loughman or Heffernan takes a case against the IRFU, citing duty of care, then someone in head office will be sitting on a sharp stick making a credible defence.
If in Hamilton it was the case that the stadium tech facilities were short of what was required for an elite game then why didn’t the Ireland reps jump up and down when they were doing the recce?
Think of the number of people on the IRFU payroll who sat down at home to watch that match on TV, and understood immediately what they were witnessing. Could no one have picked up a phone?
Surely Eden Park however offered both sides whatever they needed to track the progress and health of their players. In which case if you have the evidence then make the call.
The reality is that Jeremy Loughman and Dave Heffernan were blessed to avoid a second head injury that could have had catastrophic consequences. Both scenarios were avoidable. There’s no secret in that.
