It’s a dangerous game, kicking the balls back out during the warm-up.
Concussion is a hot topic in Gaelic football at the moment, following Mayo’s failure to withdraw Lee Keegan immediately after a sickening clash of heads with Cork’s Eoin Cadogan in Sunday’s Allianz League opener.
In today’s Irish Independent, columnist Tomás Ó Sé says he was concussed five or six times during his own playing career and admits he never treated it with the seriousness he now realises it warrants.
One anecdote he tells about his brother Marc, however, reveals that not all brain injuries are the result of collisions with opponents – some concussions simply drop out of the sky.
“We played a League match up in Leitrim one year and my brother Marc, a substitute that day, was behind the goals retrieving balls when someone boomed an O’Neill’s that came down with snow on it and caught him on the crown of the head.
“On the way home he admitted not being able to recall being in the dug-out watching parts of the game. Again, we found humour in it, ignorant to the dangers of even something as simple as that.”
The top of the head, the ear, the back of the thigh… there is no nice place to get hit by a size 5 O’Neills.
