'Why has my fed gone all hunny?'

As ever, Jonny Wilkinson was hurling himself into the tackle with complete abandon.

"It was against Bayonne, away," the former England flyhalf, who now plays for Toulon, recalls.

"I went to smash their back row and caught his elbow right on the chin.

"I reeled away and hit the floor, came to a little and thought: 'What's going on?'

"The Toulon medical staff told me: 'You're not right, you have to come off'," Wilkinson says.

"Then I noticed my wrist was really sore. I looked at the video and saw that, when I fell, my elbow went right over the wrist.

"So, I sat down on the bench, and Felipe Contepomi went on.

"Seven minutes later, he was back beside me, because he had been knocked out as well. He was face down on the floor, face in the mud, with his arms splayed out.

"When he came round, he kept asking me the same question, over and over again. I told him: 'You have already asked me this, God knows how many times.'

"I looked at Felipe and thought: 'Are you concussed and I'm not?'

"I knew exactly what the score was, what was happening in the game. I asked myself whether I should still have been out there."

It is complex for Wilkinson. Everything always is. The intrinsic perils of rugby have instinctively been embraced to the exclusion of any notion of self-preservation.

Last season, however, another grimly similar incident against Exeter in the Heineken Cup gave him pause.

"It rattled my head so much, my brain must have moved.

"I went to walk off and I felt as if I was going over my toes. I was stumbling around, seeing stars."

The problem - one highlighting the imperative for clear concussion protocols - was that nobody could definitively instruct him on what to do next.

"I needed someone to tell me, clearly, if I was playing or not," Wilkinson argues.

"Who is qualified to make that decision? You tend to know your own body the best.

"But sometimes, the person looking after you has his or her hands tied by the club, by the pressures of promotion or relegation. No wonder it is a tough area. No wonder no one can find the answer."