St Declan’s Stone in Ardmore, Co Waterford is probably more of a geological miracle than anything else but even if it didn’t, as legend has it, follow that county’s patron saint over the Irish Sea from Wales, it remains a subtle testimony to endurance and cultural memory.

MALCOLM GLADWELL’S damning profile of the relationship between American Football and brain injury, which he wrote for the New Yorker over two years ago, has stuck with me ever since.