Friday night's nail-biting game at the SCG between the Hawks and Swans saw Sydney lose Jake Lloyd 40 seconds into the game followed by Sam Reid at half-time to concussion, after both received heavy knocks to the head.

The casualties drew comment from Paul Roos and Patrick Dangerfield, who said they'd both like to see a concussion sub available to teams whose players are unable to make it back onto the field after such incidents. 

Their rationale stems from unfairness; the notion that by looking after the player's health (which all in the AFL agree should be the priority) significantly reduces their team's ability to win the game. Dangerfield mentioned that once the opposition knows their opponent is down a player, they'll often "spin the legs and ramp up the speed" to expose their reduced ability to use the interchange.

In principle, it's hard to disagree that when a team loses a player or, worse, two players to concussion, their chances of winning have been unfairly reduced. But in an era of the game where incremental rather than major improvements can be the difference between premiership success and just another season, the risk that the concussion sub would be tactically exploited to introduce fresh legs into the game is a real possibility.

Other than the likelihood of concussion subs being used to gain a tactical advantage, there is also the ideal that there are limitations to just how "fair" football and, for that matter, life will ever be. While the AFL needs to ensure that there is nothing systematically unjust within its competition, unfairness from random events is something that can't be avoided. In fact, it's often responsible for the best sporting stories.

One of my strongest early footballing memories was watching the 1989 grand final on the TV at my grandparents' house. Seeing Dermott Brereton get smashed by Mark Yeates, watching "Dipper" play out the game with a punctured lung while Gary Ayres and John Platten were also incapacitated left an indelible mark on my mind. Even at the ripe old age of six, I could sense that this, the last ever VFL premiership, was an even more significant achievement than many since the VFL began in 1896 because of the enormous personal sacrifices many of those Hawthorn players were prepared to make on the day.

A similar thought went through my mind on Friday, June 6, 2003 when Jason McCartney led the Kangaroos to victory on a wintry Friday night. Seeing McCartney wearing a long-sleeved jumper and gloves was a visual reminder that the miracle of him surviving the Bali bombings was much more inspiring than anything that can ever be seen on a sporting field. But McCartney certainly put that theory to the test, when he not only kicked an important goal in the last quarter, but was involved in Leigh Harding's goal that gave the Kangaroos one of the most memorable come-from-behind victories in AFL history. While the severity of McCartney's injuries and experience dwarfs the sacrifices made by the 1989 Hawthorn heroes, the common elements of the two stories are of young people who were still able to triumph despite life, in McCartney's case, and football, in the Hawks' case, dealing them a bad hand.

In a time when many attach more heavily to their perceived lack of fairness in the world than they do to their own dreams, sport will continue to create stories of people overcoming adversity and offer an opportunity for viewers to model the behaviours that enabled it to happen. The more time spent celebrating these stories of success and the less time spent arguing over the fairness of "the rub of the green", the better.