Alex McKinnon was a fine young 23-year-old footballer who, in one cruel moment, lost the very thing that defines his life, but that doesn't mean he still doesn't speak and act like a 23-year-old footballer.
As in one who is prone to an aggressive stance, rather than a measured response.
What should have been a "storm in a tea cup" has blown up all over Australian sport in the past seven days and, ultimately, it is likely to be McKinnon himself who pays the price in the wake of a sensationalist 60 Minutes piece last Sunday with the quadriplegic Newcastle Knights player.
Concerned for his future to pay mounting medical costs in the wake of the bad landing in a lifting tackle the previous season that left him paralysed, McKinnon and his family were interviewed, at length by Liz Hayes about his recovery and future.
I need to emphasise the "at length" here.
For every moment that appeared in the final 48 minutes of on-air footage, there was likely to have been hours more background questions, and calm responses, that got left on the cutting room floor in favour of the tears and the anger.
The biggest hatchet job was done to the Australian test captain Cameron Smith.
In showing McKinnon the video footage of his injury, for what was stated as the first time, the young man let fly at Smith's questioning of the referee over whether his Melbourne teammate, Jordan McLean, should have been put on report for a dangerous tackle, given the young Knight had ducked his head at the point of impact.
McKinnon was shown letting loose his disgust at Smith "still debating. Is he f - ing serious?"
A sad-looking Hayes then asked if Smith had ever tried to reach out, while a close-up of the on-field debate played on.
The carefully-doctored footage almost made it appear like Smith was arguing nearby McKinnon's broken body, rather than after he had been taken from the field with the true nature of his predicament not yet known.
And now, something that was bigger than the game - supporting a crippled young man at his time of need - has devolved back down into league's jingoism and parochial ties.
The backlash was immediate, as upset Queensland fans noted the convenient timing to air the story by the Sydney-based Hayes and her crew on the Sunday before Wednesday night's Origin III decider game with New South Wales.
The Queensland skipper Smith, furious that 60 Minutes did not contact him for a right of reply in the piece, took the somewhat ill-advised step to boycott all Origin interviews with the powerful Channel Nine network, even brushing off his former Origin captain and Nine interviewer, Darren Lockyer, when approached for a halftime comment.
The fallout is similar in Melbourne, with the Storm making the terse claims that Smith and his team had tried to visit the hospitalised McKinnon, but were refused, while pointing out as Australian skipper Smith had been very prominent in the "Rise for Alex" fundraising campaign last year.
With Smith fending off Nine, rival networks have leapt up to tell "the real story".
Fox Sports provided unedited footage of Smith's debate with the ref, which paints him in a more sympathetic light as he tells the official he never wanted to see something like McKinnon's incident happen in rugby league.
At press time, Smith was expected to be doing a sit-down interview with Fox Sports after refusing Nine's request for another Sunday follow-up, where they no doubt hoped to trump the 1.3 million rating from the McKinnon piece.
Fairfax Australia even re-released footage from 2013 that showed McKinnon having a violent head clash with the very Storm player who would later lift him - Jordan McLean.
McLean slumped to the ground unconscious with a broken jaw, while McKinnon apparently makes some comment above him before being high-fived by his Knights teammates.
The article's stated intent is only to "highlight how players caught up in the emotion of the game are often unaware of the seriousness of an injury", but that won't stop people talking.
McKinnon, 23, who will never have a normal life again, has every right to his own feelings.
The McKinnon family have been naturally apprehensive about the future, pointing out it will cost thousands upon thousands for his ongoing treatment and wondering what will happen as the years roll on and the wider public begins to forget about him.
But the poor-taste editing of last Sunday's programme and the decision to broadcast the most extreme of a frustrated young man's responses, without providing any context, has instantly cost McKinnon much of the very goodwill he feared was eventually going to fade away.
"Be very careful in how you interpret this - [because] Alex has the sympathy and empathy of 100 per cent of the rugby league community," said ARL commission chairman John Grant.
"But where he is at, at the moment, he has lost some of that support. I don't think that's what he would have wanted."
I hope Nine plan on taking some of the revenue they made from advertisers after the 1.3 million rating and giving it to the McKinnons.
It is the least they can do after what they have cost him.