The worst case of a premeditated hip drop tackle I have seen and he gets 3 weeks. I watched Fui's apparent hip drop against Parra a few times and couldn't see what they were talking about. Fuimaono cam from the side and was dragged across buy the runners momentum....completely unintentional. Fui got 2 weeks.
Does anyone else think it’s absurd that Ben Creagh is on the panel? Either he comes down hard and there is perceived bias, or he comes down soft and there is the possibility that he has been lenient due to not wanting to appear biased. (I suspect the latter in this case). Surely they could excuse him from the panel for incidents involving us to remove any chance of bias being an influence.
3 weeks, how weak is that. How did Brandon Smith escape being on report as he had just as much impact as King if not more. He could have avoided folding Lawrie but went on with it when he saw King had his body in place. I thought with V'Landy's we may get the NRL to demand some more tougher penalties for this rubbish not like the previous management who kissed the Storm's ass. Some of those comparisons they showed were a joke especially Fui. Not because he was a Saints player but no way near as bad as King. Bellamy is a lucky man, as any other code would have banned him for life ages ago.
I agree that he was probably lenient to avoid any bias. Just replace him with some one else not affiliated to either club. Not hard really
Exactly. Surely they have more than three blokes they can call on so they avoid potential conflicts of interest. And Brandon Smith's a grub. His only intention was to injure Lawrie. Should have got a couple of weeks too but I guess Melbourne need him for the finals.
It was pretty poor form from Smith. I generally dislike him less than most Melbourne players. Pretty disappointing to see him carry on the way he did on the weekend.
And to think we are talking about Brandon Smith and not ‘ Ref ‘ Smith .I can only say that he must had been a most attentive student of his namesake , as he knows all the dirty tricks that only the Storm could devise . They are still a pack of A-holes as far as I am concerned .
What a load of rot. Awkward and clumsy is one way of saying it however, it's crap. All of the MEL players worked together and it was a "classic" modern day tackle. It wasn't an unfortunate incident and is expected the the NRL once again needs to step in.
Excellent point. There should be alternate panelists to step in when there is a conflict of interest. It was like when Luke Patten was in the bunker when either us or the Dogs played should never have been an option regardless of his personal integrity.
Storm probably demanded Creagh to go on the panel for that reason alone, good point. Storm are smart, they think of any way possible to gain any advantage. They don't usually go well when they have no advantage over a situation. We saw that when Bellamy coach NSW. Gallop was the best, he fined them hard and had no mercy. He would have demanded a bigger penalty for these 2 grubs with that tackle.
