Heads, you lose

I would like to conduct a little thought experiment.

Say you own a car with a sophisticated computer control system. It is in charge of everything, from the fuel injectors and ABS to all the little dashboard indicator lights, even the ones you don't really understand. Also, your car has no windows and you rely totally on external cameras, controlled by that computer, to tell you where you are and how fast you are going. The suspension is so good you can't even feel the road, and you rely on the traction control system a lot.

One day you're out driving through town and the computer is, somehow, hit so hard by a rock that it stops working and you're plunged into darkness. Eventually the computer flickers back into life and the dashboard lights say it's OK. Would you then go and drive it as fast as you could along a twisting mountain road, assuming that the computer was back in full control of the visibility, the ABS and the traction control? Or would you, I dunno, take it to the garage first?

The car, dear reader, is Hugo Lloris. Romelu Lukaku's accidental knee was the rock and suddenly the Spurs-Everton match was the potential scene for a car wreck from which the only possible victim was Hugo Lloris.

Our brains do everything; they are in charge of our every sense and action. If they get bashed they stop working for a bit. In fact if they get bashed a couple of times in a row without being repaired fully they can stop working properly permanently. Yes, permanently.

Spurs have been spluttering some pretty poor excuses since Lloris was allowed to continue, claiming they were satisfied that he was not concussed.

Let's dismiss this conceit. They could not know conclusively that he had not suffered concussion. For starters, I was watching the game and I am reasonably sure no-one brought a CT scanner onto the field to give him a once-over.

What they were relying on were questions to gauge his awareness and the limited physical examinations they could carry out (probably checking pupil responsiveness and looking for superficial evidence of injury).

This is like looking at our damaged car's bonnet and dashboard lights to decide whether it's OK to go for your mountain drive. The only practical way to be safe is to stop the car, take it to a garage and have a good old look at that computer.

Hugo Lloris, at the moment he was knocked unconscious, became a patient first and a footballer second. The doctors were, at best, guessing as to his brain health. But they relied on Lloris saying he felt OK, which is to say they relied on Lloris's brain correctly diagnosing an injury to itself. They relied on the lights on the dashboard, when it was the very computer controlling those lights that might have been malfunctioning.

Anyone who is knocked unconscious in a sports match should go off. Any argument that this is unnecessary is based on the needs of the team or the sport, not the patient. Football teams don't die or suffer long-term disability because a player goes off injured.

English rugby needs to face its demons

The inability of English rugby to find a sensible structure for its domestic competitions is madness.

On the same day the national team produced a creditable (but deeply flawed - see below) win against Australia, I joined several thousand Leicester and Harlequins fans to see two sides play at Welford Road.

The two sides were missing their best players, who were busy beating Australia. So why on earth did this club match happen?

All it really did was give some second-tier players a run-out. What country's rugby infrastructure can afford its premier domestic competition to be a proving ground for youngsters, helped along by able but ageing veterans like Nick Easter and George Chuter?

The major Southern Hemisphere nations long ago took the hard-nosed but effective decision that their respective domestic club/provincial competitions should become feeders for the Super 15 tournament. That trans-national competition is the toughest in the world and is scheduled to avoid conflicts with the Test calendar, so the very best domestic rugby never clashes with Test rugby.

At some point, the European nations have to come to the same conclusion or something similar. The Heineken Cup could become the dominant competition, for example, with promotion and relegation from European nations' domestic competitions. The Heineken Cup could then be co-ordinated around
Test matches.

Of course, that would devalue competitions like the Premiership, but that is already the case with debacles like last night's Leicester v Quins match. Better to act decisively for the good of the game than limp along as we do now.

Meanwhile, speaking of being decisive, as England wakes up to savour that win over Australia I wonder if Stuart Lancaster still believes Chris Ashton is a Test-quality winger. The burly showboater does, or used to, have a good nose for the try line but his decision-making and defensive frailty are a liability. His awful decision to chase Quade Cooper's flat pass led directly to an Australian try, on another occasion he caught a deep kick and passed to Mike Brown then fled the scene instead of supporting his fullback, and one quick tap on attack was nearly botched completely.

This England team has the potential to do well at the next World Cup, and Lancaster is building good depth in certain positions. This is especially so in the tight and loose forwards but the indecisiveness and inconsistency of most of the back line on attack and defence is an enormous problem. Fullback Mike Brown is the only exception to this criticism.

On their good days they play like they did against (a physically drained) New Zealand last season, but on a bad day they can only just summon the collective wherewithal to threaten a sloppy, unimpressive Australia. The bottom line is that this side cannot currently hope to beat either South Africa or New Zealand when those sides are in anything like top form.

This is partly because England's backs are fast, strong and capable but make too many basic mistakes under pressure. Ashton (see above), Yarde (his silly block on Ashley-Cooper), Twelvetrees (missed tackle on Toomua) and Farrell (missed goal kicks) all made errors in basic skills or decision making which cost points. Yarde showed some scintillating pace and will probably learn from his error, Farrell is a acknowledged as a world class kicker and Twelvetrees is this country's best distributing inside-centre, so these black marks need to be taken in context. But these gifted players make those mistakes under pressure too often that is the problem.

The pack, led by the increasingly assured Chris Robshaw and featuring the likes of Joe Launchbury, Billy Vuniopola, Dan Coles, Tom Youngs, Mako Vunipola, Courtney Lawes and Tom Wood, can reasonably expect to match the Springboks or All Blacks. Yet they will know in their very bones that the back line does not have the consistent quality to win such games.

Conversely, such is the depth and the intensity of high-calibre competition for places in the All Blacks that consistency has become the key to being selected. If I were England I would be more than a little nervous about facing such a side eager to atone for last season's performance.

Indeed, Chris Ashton's instinctive desire to show off with that swallow dive to score against the All Black last season will have been noted by the men in black. They will be itching to have the chance to put him firmly in his place this time around. Only greater collective and individual consistency, particularly in the backs, will prevent the New Zealanders from reasserting their long-held dominance over England.