The more I think about the Christian Petracca scenario the more uneasy I feel about it.
The insistence that everything unfolded with the best possible care and medical processes, just rings hollow.
It’s a situation when those of us on the outside are cautioned not to question the medical professionals.
These are the moments Mike Sheahan used to rail against. There are serious questions to be answered here.
Just consider the prima facie case, Petracca was in severe pain from the moment of impact.
After the seven-minute quarter-time break he sat out the first eight minutes of the second term.
What treatment was administered in that 15-minute block?
When Petracca returned he played for the next 21 and a half minutes unchanged.
The vision showed he was in excruciating pain and looked grey… so obviously unwell that it turns out opponents expressed their concern out on the field.
In this sequence of events, there were enough hints to fear Petracca’s injuries might be serious, even dangerous… drawing into question the appropriateness of him being on the field rather than further examined to diagnose the nature of his injuries.
He was taken to Epworth Hospital and once the horrific internal injuries were revealed transferred to the Alfred for surgery where he spent multiple nights in the ICU.
We now know he suffered the most severely graded rupture of the spleen.
Hindsight is twenty/twenty but there were enough red flags in real-time to raise serious questions worthy of public debate and official oversight.
It’s very difficult to simply swallow the unsubstantiated insistence all the decisions made were swift and appropriate.
Even those involved have surely second-guessed what transpired.