Dolphins coach Wayne Bennett has expressed his confusion over the decision to allow Tom Trbojevic to return this Friday after he was ruled to have suffered a category one concussion in State of Origin I.
The Manly fullback was cleared by the NRL after lobbying from Manly's club doctor Paul Bloomfield, and will hope to lift the Sea Eagles up the ladder from 10th when they take on the Dolphins in Brookvale.
Players that fail a HIA have to sit out for 11 days under new concussion protocols introduced this year, but Trbojevic's symptoms weren't considered severe enough.
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Bennett, who will now have to try combat Trbojevic's potency, was unsure about how the decision came about.
"I don't know what to make of it actually, this position we have on head injuries, I'm a bit confused by it," he said at North Sydney Oval.
After the decision was made, Manly CEO Tony Mestrov said the fullback's welfare was the club's first priority.
When asked if he'd allow the same outcome for his own players, Bennett wasn't willing to compare with Manly's decision.
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"It depends, I don't know all the background to it but he looked like he'd taken a pretty heavy knock," Bennett said of the incident towards the end of last week's Origin game.
"All I know is they put the rules in to protect the players and just hope they make the right decision."
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However, Bennett did describe the concussion protocols as "muddy" when trying to make sense of the NRL's decision to allow Trbojevic to return.
"They're muddy, don't worry about that," he said.
"That's the problem, they make the rules and then the same people that make the rules … they put doubt in your mind about how serious they are about what they're doing."
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