Blues star Tyson Frizell confirmed starter for Origin I amid concussion concerns

Tyson Frizell picked the King of Hearts to pass his concussion recall test and is a confirmed starter for New South Wales in Origin I.

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Tyson Frizell correctly chose the king of hearts in his return-to-play concussion recall test. He will be the king of NSW if he can shut down Queensland superstar Kalyn Ponga in State of Origin I tonight.

The Daily Telegraph can reveal the stringent concussion processes Frizell had to pass before being declared fit to confront Queensland.

A knocked-out Frizell was in doubt for the Origin opener after a sickening head clash suffered in St George Illawara’s loss to Cronulla 11 days ago.

The Blues back-rower — who will be defending against the brilliant Ponga this evening — underwent a series of tests and passed each of them.

One was a simple neuro psychometric computer test where Frizell was told of a card denomination and he had to click on the corresponding card which appeared on his computer screen.

Frizell is one of the Blues most experienced forwards. Picture by Brett Costello.

He passed by clicking successfully on the king of hearts over the queen of spades.

“Most of it is based on memory and speed of information processing. Speed of recall. It’s not just about getting the right answer it’s how quickly you do it as well,” said NSW team doctor, Nathan Gibbs, a former Souths and Parramatta forward.

“The computer-based tests are like a game where you have to react to things. It’s not intelligence, it is information processing, reaction and getting correct responses and doing it inside an appropriate timeline.

“But everyone is different in terms of how quickly they think which is why baseline tests are critical because you can be a very intelligent person but a very deliberate and slow thinker.

“I will give you an example. There might be a king of hearts and a queen of spades.

“They show them to the player and every time the queen of spades is shown, press one and when it’s the king of hearts, press two. Then someone may press two instead of one – that’s an error. They are looking at reaction time, speed and accuracy.

The hard-hitting backrower has struggled with injury for much of the year. Photo by Mark Metcalfe/Getty Images.

“A 10-year-old could do the test and they would probably do it well to be honest because they are used to computer games.”

Frizell trained lightly on his own for most of last week but was heavily involved in yesterday’s captain’s run at Suncorp Stadium.

His aggression and physical dominance will prove invaluable for NSW tonight.

“Tyson followed the whole return-to-play protocol. He had a SCAT 5 test on the day and he had another one after two sleeps, effectively 48 hours later. He passed that,” Gibbs said.

“He had his computer-based neuro psychometric testing, which he had baselines to compare with. That was done on Friday or Saturday with the team broke camp and was done by St George Illawarra. They have the baseline tests and he passed that.

Frizell will be tasked with shutting down Kalyn Ponga. AAP Image/Joel Carrett.

“He followed the full training this week on the return-to-play — which is cardio into easy skills into harder training.

“The final box to tick was competitive contact training, which he did on Monday morning in an opposed session against the NSW under-18s. They ran for probably half an hour and, the last time I spoke to him, he pulled up 100 per cent.

“The return-to-play protocol actually gets you back playing in seven days. Tyson could have played footy on Sunday, effectively.”

Frizell said the tests were a necessary evil.

“It is pretty frustrating,” he told Fox Sports. “The precautions in place for concussion are there to ensure the long-term health of us players and we realise it needs to be done.’’