Just an apology for not getting back on this, I haven't managed to text this properly yet (apologies) but I am pretty sure it will fix my use case, for which I'm grateful. Thanks Nicolas.

On Sun., Dec. 22, 2019, 9:09 a.m. Nicolas Goaziou, <mail@nicolasgoaziou.fr> wrote:
Hello,

Matt Price reported an issue[1] with new link syntax in Org 9.3. As
a consequence, I had to modify it slightly.

Backslash-escaping was required for some closing bracket characters.
Now, /every square bracket/ within the URI part of a bracket link must
be escaped.

I updated the manual and the ORG-NEWS file accordingly. Please let me
know if there's something suspicious.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Regards,

Footnotes:
[1]  <https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-orgmode/2019-12/msg00312.html>

--
Nicolas Goaziou