The great English winger Willie Waggle-Dagger, out of Stratford-upon-Avon, put it well: “There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life/Is bound in shallows and in miseries.”

This week we saw something of a king tide in the realms of concussion-in-sport news. None other than the King himself, Wally Lewis – the finest footballer of his generation – addressed the National Press Club and spelled out just how grim things are for those, such as him, suffering probable CTE.

I know it. You know it. No footballer had the swagger, the dagger or the-moves-like-Jagger of Wally Lewis. And yet here he was, confessing his fears, his vulnerability, his growing early dementia because of his years of training and playing football.

In the audience at the Press Club was Collingwood premiership defender Nathan Murphy, who had just announced his early retirement aged 24 because of his concerns over his repeated concussions.

A day earlier, Cronulla co-captain Dale Finucane had announced his own immediate retirement from the NRL, not really because he had decided enough was enough, but the game’s administration itself, following medical and surely legal advice, gave him no option. Finucane admitted he had tried everything to change the decision, but all avenues were closed.

All three events are extraordinary. No footballer of Lewis’s calibre has ever spoken like that; no AFL premiership defender has ever called it quits for such a reason at Murphy’s age. And they all happened in the past fortnight. The position of the dinosaurs who continue to dismiss or diminish the importance of regarding concussion as an existential threat to the game and its players becomes more ludicrous by the week.

Wally Lewis showed no thoughts of self-preservation during his celebrated playing career, but it has come at a cost.Credit: NRL Photos

Federal Sports Minister Anika Wells is already on board. While not yet committing to the $18 million that Lewis was seeking for CTE prevention, care and research, Wells is at least committing to finding as much as she can.

“The ‘she’ll be right’ era is over because we now know,” she told me by text on Friday, “she, or he, won’t be right. And if we know that . . . we must do more and you will see that in the budget. My portfolios include aged care and sport and most consider it a strange mix . . . but on this issue it provides a unique position to take action and that’s what we will do.”