NSW's team doctor says he was not shown footage of Isaah Yeo stumbling out of the first tackle of State of Origin I, despite it being an apparent sign of a potential concussion.
Blues lock Yeo came stumbling out of the first tackle of State of Origin I, a sign of motor incoordination used to identify concussions, but the play was not stopped and he was not given a head injury assessment for a few minutes of play.
NSW's key forward had clearly taken a nasty knock, first from Josh Papali'i's shoulder and possibly from the ground as his neck snapped back on impact.
He got up awkwardly, with Maroons pivot Cameron Munster pointing and shouting that Yeo was wobbling.
When the Panthers co-captain made it back to the defensive line, teammate Tariq Sims tried to hold him up, before Yeo turned around, made another tackle and played out the rest of NSW's 16-10 loss as normal.
Broadcasters and fans commented on the apparent symptoms of concussion.
"Oh no. Isaah Yeo has stumbled," Andrew Johns said on Channel Nine
"He's in a lot of trouble," Cameron Smith added.
But it was not just legends of the game or people with medical training who saw something amiss.
The independent doctor reportedly deemed Yeo as a category three, meaning there were not clear signs of concussion, leaving it up to NSW trainers to check if Yeo could pass an assessment on the field.
The on-field head injury assessment includes checking the player's balance and some memory questions, which Yeo said he passed.
"No dramas. Remembered everything," he told Channel Nine after the game.
"I've had head knocks and normally if that's the case you don't remember anything or it switches me off. It was just big contact. No dramas."
But NSW doctor Nathan Gibbs has told News Corp that he had only seen footage of the initial contact with Papali'i, not footage of Yeo stumbling, which was not replayed on the Nine broadcast.
"At ground level it is hard to see because people are in your line of sight," Gibbs told News Corp.
"We were asked to come and talk to the bunker doctor and view the incident. He showed us the point of contact, and the bunker doctor, who knows what he is doing, has all the camera angles and said it was a category three, go and check that he is OK with an on-field assessment, which we got our trainer to do.
"He reported he was fine, he played the whole game out with no ill-effects. The bunker doctor made a call and we responded to the bunker doctor's call."
Gibbs said the bunker "show us what they choose to show us" and "it is their [the bunker's] call, not ours".
"That is how the system works well. We're not concerned about that aspect of it," he said.
"The people who have all the camera angles can make a better call. In the end, they make the call."
NRL head of football Graham Annesley acknowledged, after reviewing the footage with the league's chief medical officer, "there were indicators that could have supported a category two assessment", which would mean Yeo had to leave the field for a longer assessment.
"[But] the decision to have the team medical trainer conduct an on-field check did not reveal any signs that an off-field HIA was required," Annesley said in a statement to ABC Sport.
"This decision was supported after a further check by the NSW team medical officer, Dr Nathan Gibbs, at half-time and again at full-time, with the player not exhibiting any symptoms of concussion."
Blues adviser Greg Alexander said Yeo was "obviously affected and probably should not have stayed on as long as he did".
"I don't know why it wasn't called immediately from the independent doctor. When our doctor went down and spoke to the independent doctor it was called a category three, which means all he needed to do was pass the HIA and he did," Alexander said on SEN.
"Word up into the box was he passed his HIA."
'It makes me sick': Munster
Munster said someone had to take responsibility for missing obvious signs of concussion.
"It wasn't rocket science, you could see he wasn't well," he said.
"We've been speaking about it for years and years about the welfare of our players and our heads. You want to showcase that in the biggest game of the year."
He compared it to Origin II in 2020, when he was taken off the field after just two minutes due to a head knock and did not return, despite answering the HIA questions correctly.
"I know it's an Origin game … but someone's got to take a stand," Munster said.
"I didn't want to go off [in 2020], I passed all my HIAs and everything. But because I stumbled and wasn't right, they pulled me."
ABC/AAP
