Referee Steve Clark, on the advice of his touch judges, decided Pritchard did not intend to touch the ball, ruled play-on and Penrith got possession back 25 metres from their own line.
Interviewed afterwards , Prichard left little doubt what his intention had been.
"That was a knock-on, man, for sure!" the 20-year-old, who only found out he was playing first grade at 10am yesterday as a replacement for the injured Tony Puletua (hip), told the Herald.
"That was critical in the game. If the ref gave them them ball, they could have got another set of six on us .
"He said 'play-on', I said 'sweet' .... I got away with murder."
In the aftermath of the incident, a Wests Tigers player could be heard to say to referee Steve Clark "you'll be disappointed in that when you see the video", to which Clark replied "not as disappointed as you're going to be".