You will remember, back in the day, how you could see a league player completely pole-axed with a coat-hanger by an opponent – dropped at his feet like a quivering sack of spuds – only for various QCs, aided by so-called bio-mechanical experts, to argue on Monday night at Phillip St that it was no such thing. See, if we put this in slo-mo, and closely examine the point of impact, together with the angle that it strikes, you can see that my client was actually in George St, posting a letter to his Aunt Sally in Gunning at that very moment, and it only looks like he creamed him. The two leaguies knew it was nonsense, as did the QCs and the experts, and so too did the judiciary, at least mostly. Mercifully, those days seem to have mostly gone with the new league system favouring those who 'fess up to the bleeding obvious, plead guilty, and stop wasting everyone's precious time.

There remains one area, however, where transparent nonsense goes on, in a particularly dangerous field – where otherwise honest people are seen to maintain complete nonsense – and it is an area that requires the NRL's urgent attention.

For you see, while it is one thing for the NRL to have introduced their highly commendable concussion protocols, requiring players that have been badly hit to be immediately removed from the field and stay there, it is quite another to have the people who administer that protocol actually observe it. There can be no better example of this than the situation with the Souths halfback, Adam Reynolds last Sunday.

Just 18 minutes into the match against the Roosters, he goes in for a tackle on second-rower Aiden Guera in the 18th minute after stumbling several times following a mistimed tackle, only for his head to come into fiercely hard, if inadvertent, contact with Guera's hard-rising knee. Obvious to everyone that knows anything about concussion, Reynold's brain has just hit the inside of his skull and it is time for lights out. The Souths trainer, Eddie Farah, recognises it and ushers him from the field. Obviously, under the concussion rule, he must do this for his own safety – and, I might say, the legal safety of his employers, Souths, and the presiding body, the NRL, who owe him a legal duty of care. (The moral duty of care is even more obvious, but let's leave that for the moment.)

But wait!