Ryan Mason admits that he was ‘shocked’ that Arsenal’s David Luiz was allowed to complete the first-half after his horrific collision with Raul Jimenez during the encounter with Wolves.
The former Tottenham youth product suffered his own head trauma after clashing heads with Gary Cahill back in 2017, and despite undergoing a successful operation, never played again.
After months of rehabilitation, the decision was eventually taken to retire from football in March 2018, at the tender age of just 26, and he of all people can speak on the matter from the inside.
Mason has called for the rules to change after seeing the incident at the weekend, especially because he believes that the medical teams followed the current protocols correctly, but that those are inadequate.
He told talkSPORT: “I was quite upset to see something like that happen on a football pitch again, it’s very concerning.
“It’s a real shame my incident didn’t change the perception; what is it really going to take for people to start realising this is something really, really serious?
“I’ll be honest, I was shocked David Luiz was allowed to play on. I’m not criticising the Arsenal doctor because there’s a protocol in place and I’m sure he’s followed that.
“But that protocol that is currently in place is not enough; it’s not enough just to have two or three minutes, it’s not enough.
“It was a bad one; the noise, the impact, the speed of the challenge as well – it was a bad one. It didn’t help that there were no fans and you could actually hear the point of contact.
“But I looked at that and thought immediately, neither of those players can play on. Sometimes you have to forget the protocol and have a bit of common sense.
“The game needs to change this rule. It’s pretty clear that five minutes on the side of the pitch while there is pressure to get the game restarted is not enough to see if someone is concussed or not.
“This current protocol we have in place isn’t okay and it’s dangerous.”
You can only hope that Jimenez’s injury recovers in such a way that he is able to return to action in the near future, and that no adverse affects come from the clash, but looking back at Mason’s incident, it leads you to consider that may not be as easy as initially thought.
Patrick