COMMENT: Although you might have noticed I am not short of an opinion, I try never to dabble in the area that so many have dabbled in this week.
Specifically the plight of Ryan Crotty.
Should Ryan Crotty retire? Who on earth am I to say?
Issues, yes. Concepts, ideas, policies, laws, things that affect large groupings of us, people in public office people who are accountable, yes.
I have plenty of opinions.
But I have always felt it is crossing a line to specifically tell people how to conduct their lives when it comes to highly personal things, like the scenario Crotty is facing.
I have read with a moderate amount of surprise, if not alarm, the work of people this week who have literally no knowledge of Crotty's specific plight.
No medical expertise, no understanding even of concussion, and yet have decided they are best placed to tell him what to do next.
Even his sister, who perhaps started this whole debate with a tweet, later came back with a withdrawal and an acceptance that her initial diagnosis was driven out of genuine family concern.
So who are we, any of us, to offer Crotty any sort of advice? Unless, of course, it's a very broad base sense of wishing him well, which I am sure we all do.
Concussion and its repercussions is the plight of most contact sports around the world.
The NFL is writing cheques for hundreds of millions as a result of not taking the nature of their sport seriously enough sooner.
Injury, generally, is taken extremely seriously at elite level sport. Rules have been changed, we have concussion protocols that gets players off the field immediately. And it's all driven by player concern.
There isn't a person at the highest level of any contact sport these days who isn't hyper-aware of what they are doing, and what is involved in the wellbeing of their players.
Do you honestly believe Steve Hansen and co aren't second guessing their every move around people like Crotty? Do you honestly believe Crotty doesn't have the best medical advice at hand? Do you honestly believe Crotty himself hasn't thought about all of this a couple of thousand times, and talked it through with everyone he needs to?
And yet armed with all of that, amateurs with no experience, knowledge, or any level of expertise at all, feel it's okay to wander on in with advice, direction and instruction.
Good opinion is generally built on detail, fact, experience, knowledge, wisdom, insight, and some research. There has been scant evidence of any of that in the diagnosis via media of the Crotty case.
It's just the ability to scramble a few hundred words together based on the fact you think you have the right to dictate someone's future.
I can diagnose that it's called ignorance mixed with a good dose of blind arrogance.
