Smug Jonathan Davies and Co, who mocked George North incident, should know concussion is no laughing matter

VIEW FROM THE SOFA: Six Nations Forum BBC Red Button

George North was partly at fault for England's second try, scored by Jonathan Joseph (Getty Images)

I once suffered mild concussion twice in quick succession. It was the result of trying something foolhardy on an 11ft-high skateboard ramp... then repeating it equally unsuccessfully.

After shooing away the stars and cartoon tweeting birds that were circling my head, I drove to my cousin’s house (it was closest to the ramp) with a severely aching bonce. Once there, I was told to quit moaning and have a beer. Looking back, it was a bone-headed thing for him to tell me, but then again, my cousin is a bonehead. And he had an audience of one, rather than several million rugby fans.

Unlike John Inverdale, Sir Clive Woodward, Jonathan Davies and Jeremy Guscott, who dissected Friday’s Wales v England match on the BBC red button.

Much of the forum was spent speaking about how much better England were in the second half and how Wales dropped off after the break – in other words, typical post-match navel-gazing.

But then they started talking about George North, the Wales wing who was knocked sideways in the first half then sickeningly fell to the ground in a heap on 66 minutes after a knee to the head. He clearly had no idea of what had happened to him and Brian Moore, the co-commentator, said at the time: “That looks to me like he is definitely concussed.”

It was possibly the easiest bit of insight he will make – after all, North looked like a boxer who’d been pinged by a wrecking ball. Two minutes later he was back on the pitch.

Inverdale brought up the incident by way of acknowledging a string of emails sent in remarking that North “clearly looked concussed”. He scoffed at the viewers’ letters by commenting “I don’t know whether they are all medically qualified, but...” before handing over to Davies to comment on whether the player should have stayed on.

As slow-motion pictures of North being whacked on the jaw and keeling over were replayed, Davies said: “His form didn’t go down after he’d had a bang on the head, because he was dreadful from the start.” One who thought Davies’s “joke” was funny was Woodward, who could be heard in the background tittering like a schoolboy.

Davies began laughing himself and replied: “What, Clive, what?”

He then completely ignored the issue of a player’s welfare – he only needs to look across the pond at the NFL to see what the long-term effects of repeated knocks to the head can do to a sport’s reputation – and continued on about how North will find it tough to justify his place in the Wales team.

It had been a perfect opportunity to highlight an issue that will not disappear as long as rugby players continue to get bigger, stronger and faster. And the clutch of smug, chummy pundits completely botched it.

In years to come, perhaps when the first former egg-chaser is found to have concussion-induced dementia, Davies and Co may look back at Friday’s forum and wince.

And so they should. On this evidence they would get on like a house on fire with my bone-headed cousin.