On Saturday night Jonny Lomax will line up for St Helens as they take on the Sydney Roosters in the World Club Challenge, live on Sky Sports Action.

It’s the latest instalment in what has been a glittering career for the player widely tipped to be crowned Man of Steel this year.

However, the 29-year-old with the most recognisable headgear in the game told Sky Sports’ Golden Point podcast this week that a head clash during a game as a teenager almost cost him more than his career...

“At the time when I clashed heads, I thought I had a bit of concussion. I was pretty ill after the game – a few bits of vomiting – and missed the next day of school. I went back into school on the Friday and struggled with a headache.

“I had a headache Saturday and a headache on Sunday. I had a bit of an argument with my mum and dad because I wanted to go to the cinema with some of my amateur mates to watch a film. My mum being a nurse wasn’t that happy with how I was presenting symptoms.

“She said I wasn’t going, and low and behold about half an hour later I found myself in excruciating pain with a headache. I put my head under a cold tap because it just felt like it was on fire.

“I lost the use of my legs a bit so I sat down and put a wet towel on my head. From there it became a bit of a blur. I remember being carried down the stairs by my dad and then coming in and out of consciousness on the couch.

“The last thing that I remember was projectile vomiting all over the ambulance. From there it was a blue-light ambulance to Whiston Hospital. My mum told the registrar the story, they did a quick CT scan and I was taken over to Alder Hey for basically open-skull surgery.

“It turned out that when I’d clashed heads I’d fractured my skull. Where the skull had fractured that had severed one of the arteries and that had started bleeding out.