I'd say they will grade it as about a grade 2 dangerous tackle. That means it was a bad careless tackle, but not reckless. Danny's crime was he lifted in the tackle, as most players still try to do. It's natural. It's the way we all grew up playing the game. A tackle where you lift the player and dump him is like driving a player back or hitting him ball and all and sitting him on his arse. It's dominating defence. Unfortunately for Danny and a lot of other players in recent years the powers that be have decided that when a player is lifted above the horizontal it is ALWAYS a suspendable offence, depending on guilty pleas etc. I'm not saying they should be allowed, because clearly if they were there would be serious injuries. But players should be treated more leniently when they did very little to put the player in a dangerous position. Sometimes you see a tackler run in as the third or fourth man, he picks up a stationary and already subdued ball carrier and tips him on his head. That to me is a bad lifting tackle, because it is totally unnecessary and was caused entirely by the tackler and not momentum of the ball runner and other defenders. However when the tackler makes first contact and lifts, as most players are stil naturally disposed to doing, and the ball runners momentum and weight contribute significantly to the tackle going bad and/or other tacklers also contribute through no fault of their own I think the tackler should be dealt with in a more lenient fashion. It's a bit like in a high tackle where one player swings his arm while another produces a reflex grab when wrong footed. One is reckless and asking for trouble, the other is an unfortunate but natural occurrence. I would put Buderus' in the less serious category and expect a suspension of 1-2 matches. Crocker's was more serious and I would expect 3-4 matches. I think that's close to what he would have got but clearly his loading (which I don't agree with) went against him.
I don't believe in rubbing players out for long periods of time unless they really deserve it. No one in the game benefits from that except the spiteful and unreasonable fans who like to see players from other clubs punished. We ask the players to play the game in a tough and physical way and when they stray from the rules in a minor way, usually by accident, I don't think it's fair to lambast them and ban them for weeks on end, and I especially hate to see all the hysteria that surrounds some of these situations with fans (that's right fans of rugby league) frothing at the mouth and calling for 8, 10 and 15 weeks suspensions. I doubt Danny Buderus will play again this season unless the Knights make the grand final but that will only be to the detriment of the NRL finals series, to have one of the game's best missing. He should cop a 1 or 2 week suspension and that would be reasonable but for God's sake give the guy a fair go, look at what he did and why it happened.
