Using concatenated results individually - arrays

Question

I got a complicated query which produces a concatenated result. However, although GROUP_CONCAT is necessary for other purposes, I still need to be able to use the pieces of the concatenated string individually.
GROUP_CONCAT(id, name, date AS concat1
echo $db_field['concat1'];
...produces this output: IdNameDate, and I need to be able to use (and echo) Id, Name and Date separately. I guess it must be assigned to an array, I'm a begginer in PHP and I really appreciate any help.
For sake of simplicity, above I have used id instead of eventid, name instead of eventname and date instead of eventstartdate. Below is the full code.
if ($db_found) {
$SQL ="
select sportname,
tournament_templatename,
tournament_stagename,
GROUP_CONCAT(eventid, eventname, eventstartdate SEPARATOR '<br />' ) as concat1
from (
SELECT event.id AS eventid,
event.name AS eventname,
event.tournament_stageFK AS eventtournamentstageFK,
event.startdate AS eventstartdate,
tournament_stage.id AS tournament_stageid,
tournament_stage.name AS tournament_stagename,
tournament_stage.tournamentFK AS tournament_stagetournamentFK,
tournament.id AS tournamentid,
tournament.name AS tournamentname,
tournament.tournament_templateFK AS tournamenttournament_templateFK,
tournament_template.id AS tournamenttemplateid,
tournament_template.name AS tournament_templatename,
tournament_template.sportFK AS tournament_templatesportFK,
sport.id AS sportid,
sport.name AS sportname
FROM
event INNER JOIN tournament_stage ON event.tournament_stageFK=tournament_stage.id
INNER JOIN tournament ON tournament_stage.tournamentFK=tournament.id
INNER JOIN tournament_template
ON tournament.tournament_templateFK=tournament_template.id
INNER JOIN sport ON tournament_template.sportFK=sport.id
WHERE
DATE(event.startdate) = CURRENT_DATE()
) a
group by sportname, tournament_templatename, tournament_stagename
order by sportid, tournament_templatename, tournament_stagename";
$result = mysql_query($SQL);
if($result === FALSE) {
die(mysql_error());
}
while($db_field=mysql_fetch_assoc($result)){
echo $db_field['concat1'];
}
mysql_close($db_handle);
}
I either need a way to get back to results before concatenating them, or a way to display IdNameDate as Id*Name*Date so I can use * as an explode delimiter.

Answer 1

Something like this?
$group = array();
$fields = array();
$fields['id'] = 2;
$fields['name'] = "test";
$fields['date'] = "2010/02/13";
$group["test"] = $fields;
To get an individual field:
echo $group["test"]["id"];
To get a whole group line:
echo implode(",", $group["test"]); // change "," to any delimiter character
To get all group lines:
foreach($group as $key => $g)
echo $key.":".implode(",", $g).";"; // change "," to any delimiter character
Hope this helps...

Answer 2

I guess the only way to do it is to:
Explode the GROUP_CONCAT results to get individual strings
Use substr to extract Id, Name and Date from each result as Id and Date are consistent, they always have the same number of characters
In the end, GROUP_CONCAT does more harm than good.