One thing I think Gus does have right is that we see too many players suspended nowadays - players are getting time on the sidelines for ‘pressure on the neck’ when in reality, they wouldn’t even have known about it, let alone meant to do it.
Bans should really be kept for incidents that are either intentional or reckless. And I’m guessing this is where Gus has got himself all tangled up - he’s sick of seeing players banned for fairly innocuous contact, but he’s chosen the wrong incident to fight this battle on.
In my opinion, get rid of all the relatively minor charges that we currently suspend blokes for and replace them with fines, but then when you get an incident like this one, hit em with monster bans - minimum of 10 games.
Now, whilst I don’t think for 1 minute Latrell meant to injure Manu, in the heat of the moment, he went in for a monster shot with no consideration of the potential negative outcomes, which is entirely natural in the heat of the moment, you don’t stop and think ‘what if this goes wrong’. In a contact sport like ours, you’re always going to get incidents like these where it goes wrong - but the players need to know that if you choose to play on the edge like that, it’s a high risk way of defending, and can cause serious damage if timing is just slightly out, and subsequently if it does, you’ll be sitting out for a long long time.
Thats the only way to minimise these types of incidents happening - players ultimately need to be more controlled with their aggression, because if not, they might get it wrong, and there should be a heavy sanction for if they do.