NRL Judiciary is an absolute joke

The NRL judiciary has officially become a farce. The fact that Jarryd Hayne can escape suspension for a blatant head butt, just because he is an elite player, is crap. He should have been suspended for breaking the rules – Origin or not.

It does give the stink of preferential treatment especially when Issac Luke was ruled out of a Test match last year and Cameron Smith was punted from the 2008 Grand Final by the judiciary.

The first thing that everyone in the rugby league community, including myself, agrees on is that Hayne gave Billy Slater nothing more than a love tap last week. It was far from a vicious blow and would not have hurt Slater one bit.

That, however, is completely irrelevant.

This was no accident. It was planned and yes it was in the heat of battle, but a head butt is a head butt.

Jarryd Hayne broke the rules and needed to be punished. Hell, he even knew it in the post-match interview. He knew it Tuesday night too in his post-judiciary press conference. He was smiling like a cat that got the cream because he knew he just put one over the judiciary.

It was far from the worst incident in the history of the game but Hayne still hit Slater with his head – which is completely against the rules of the game – and deserved to be punished. Just his bad luck and stupidity that punishment was going to be, and damn well should have been, Origin II.

Lose the lawyers

I don’t know when it became common place for QC lawyers to defend players in an NRL judiciary, but it has got to stop. Rugby league is a simple game and far too often we buggerise around with it and muddy our own waters.

Lawyers have no place defending players for on field actions. While we’re at it, doctors, sports scientists, professors or any other left field character witness we have seen over the years have no place either. NRL players have either committed an offence, broken the rules, or they haven’t. It’s either a high tackle, dangerous throw, head butt ... or it’s not.

The judiciary is made up of ex- players who have been around the game long enough. They would have a fair idea of a punishment to suit a crime and all actions should be judged in rugby league terms. This is not a court room and it’s time we stopped treating it like one.

“Evidence” should only be given by the offending player and his coach. Let’s keep it simple.

Fix the damn rule

The fact that Hayne and Luke Lewis were even in jeopardy of missing an Origin game for minor incidents is actually the biggest joke of all. Peter Sterling says it best when he says some players toil for 300 NRL games and may only play a dozen Origin and Test matches.

There is a complete imbalance in weighting an Origin game the same as a match against the worst side in the NRL. I have two suggestions to fix this problem.

Firstly, all Test and Origin matches should be worth at least two club games. That means a two game NRL suspension rules the player out of Origin – not these one week ‘nothing’ offences.

The other is to keep club and representative reports and suspensions totally separate – the punishment is served in the arena in which the offence occurred.

Thurston/Hayne comparison

Now before I get labelled a hypocrite, let me clarify why I am happy with what the judiciary ruled on Johnathan Thurston last week.

Most thought Thurston should have been suspended for his swearing tirade last week. I believe otherwise as I don’t think swearing is nearly as bad as head butting. At the end of the day, the referee decided there was no issue with JT and didn’t penalise or report the issue.

In hindsight, maybe JT should have been suspended but again the lawyers got involved and screwed around.

Hayne head butted Slater and it doesn’t matter about the force, intent to injure or anything else – a head butt is a head butt and now, apparently, that is all ok.

TIPPING
Tips – Titans, Canberra, Newcastle, Brisbane, Roosters
Last Week – 4/8
Total – 51/96 (53%)

Thanks for reading and don’t forget you can comment below, find me on Twitter (@keyto316) or email me directly at andrew.keyte@gmail.com.

Cheers,
Keyto