Honestly, it drives me mad. There was an incident last season where a team, Spurs I think, although it may have been Chelsea, allowed a player to play on when it appeared the player had been knocked unconscious on the pitch. A very dangerous thing to do and they were rightly questioned about it. Thankfully clubs are more cautious now, although Chelsea allowed Courtois to play on for a short while after he had been clouted around the head the other day. They probably shouldn't have done and rightfully got a bit of stick from the press. However, in bigging it up, and boy do Sky know how to big things up (Cleverley v Bellow, pay per view?!?!), Sky report that he left the pitch "bleeding from his ear". Now blood coming out of someone's ear following a head injury is serious **** and even a club physio would have acted on this. He certainly wouldn't be walking off the pitch, put it that way. He was, in fact, bleeding from a cut on his ear, which is a whole different thing and, er, not very serious. I bled from my ear the other day when I snipped it whilst cutting my hair with a set of clippers, but I'm pretty sure I wasn't close to death. But Sky were intent on suggesting that Chelsea were dicing with a man's life by wording it like they did. Reminded me of the time when I was working in a children's A&E department and we had a young lad brought in strapped up following a head injury. Can't remember what had happened, but it wasn't serious. Anyway, the lad had his head strapped down and was flat on his back. As I mentioned, blood coming from the ear could indicate a serious problem, as could CSF (cerebrospinal fluid), which is a clearish fluid. The lad was being examined by a rather jumpy junior doctor, who saw a pool of clear fluid in the lad's ear and set about panicking. I just about stopped her pulling the crash bell, before pointing out to her that little children, when hurt, tend to cry, and as he was strapped to a board, flat on his back, the only direction for the tears to go was down, and his earhole was directly under his eye! Anyhow, turns out that Courtois was given the all clear by his doctors and was treated for a minor cut on his ear!!
What about the guy in the Aussie NRL final last weekend. He played with a fractured cheekbone. They've now found he also has a fractured eye socket and needs a plate inserting. He played on and won the game. The injury happened after 6 seconds. That's some tough guy.
The issue is that a double concussion is often a fatal injury. If during the 14 minutes Courtois played on for he's received another hard blow to the head he could well be in a coffin right now. There should be a continuos fuss made until players who've been knocked unconscious stop going back onto the pitch. What Chelsea did was very dangerous. With boxing a fighter shouldn't be allowed to be hit once they are unconscious, obviously it's happened before when someone's on the ropes, in the corner, fallen forward onto another punch etc but it also helps that boxers train & spar & there bodies adapt to taking punches as mad as that might sound. It's very rare these days that a boxer gets seriously injured in the ring, in fact a lot of boxing fans constantly moan that the fights are stopped too early
One of the RL players a couple of years ago had to have a testicle removed after an injury during a game. He played on after the collision...
Should there be a rule brought in that would allow the sub keeper to be brought on while the injured keeper is assessed, then if deemed fit the original keeper could be brought back on?
He did, yes. Played on for a long time with it too. Saw footage of the game recently, and I very much doubt that today's physio's wouldn't have picked up on it, but back then the story was somewhat different. He kept holding his neck and was visibly uncomfortable, yet he still made some very impressive saves. We've had much worse goalkeeping displays from keepers with fully functioning necks - Maik Taylor and Tony Bullock spring to mind!