There’s no valour in any concussion

What’s most embarrassing about my sports injuries is they didn’t involve sports.

Tue, 15 Mar, 2016 - 00:00

John Fogarty is the Irish Examiner’s GAA correspondent, with unique insights into the action on the pitch and in the Gaelic games’ corridors of power.

This month 13 years ago, I tore the medial collateral ligament in my left knee. Not on the field of play but spinning down a kid’s swimming pool slide on a camping site in Christchurch, New Zealand. On the way down, my left leg caught the slide’s steel stairs as the rest of my body followed gravity’s course. Pain. Worse still, stupid pain.

My concussion story isn’t a proud one, either. Mine wasn’t about putting about sticking my head where others feared to stick their boot. Thirteen months ago, I was on my way to answering the front door from my upstairs home office when I slipped on a toy the dog had just left on one of the steps close to the landing.