Penrith are desperate to have Scott Sorensen available against the Broncos in Magic Round.
The Penrith Panthers will challenge Scott Sorensen’s two-match ban at the NRL judiciary in a major examination of the league’s crackdown on high contact. And it emerged on Monday that NRL boss Andrew Abdo has now instructed the bunker not to intervene and retrospectively sin-bin players moving forward.
Panthers back-rower Sorensen was sin-binned on Saturday night for a shoulder charge that collected Manly prop Nathan Brown in the head. Brown wasn’t even required to leave the field for a head injury assessment (HIA), but Sorensen was given his marching orders for 10 minutes. On Sunday morning, the match review committee hit Sorensen with a grade-two charge, which carries a two-game suspension with an early guilty plea.
But the Panthers will challenge the ruling at the NRL judiciary and are seeing a downgrade to a grade-one charge. That would result in just a $1500 fine and leave Soresen free to take on the Broncos in Brisbane in Magic Round.
If the Panthers are unsuccessful at the judiciary, Sorensen will be wiped out for three games and miss matches against the Cowboys and Knights as well. The hearing will be a true test of how on-board the judiciary is with the NRL’s crackdown on high contact.
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A whopping 18 players were sin-binned in Round 8 – the majority for high tackles – after the NRL started clamping down on contact to the head about a month ago. The situation seemed to ramp up last weekend as multiple players were sin-binned in the next set of six following innocuous incidents.
Andrew Johns lashes out over NRL high tackle farce
Speaking on Channel 9 on Sunday, Andrew Johns urged NRL officials to make a public statement about what a player is supposed to do in Sorensen’s situation. Johns pointed out that Sorensen risked injury to himself if he didn’t brace for the contact or tried to tackle low, and would like dislocate a shoulder or elbow by wrapping his arms in such close proximity to teammates.
“They want players to defend low, but if Scott Sorensen goes low on Nathan Brown he’s gonna knock himself out as cold as a spud,” Johns said on the Footy Show. “If he wraps his arms, he will dislocate his shoulder – he has to brace and get himself into space. I have no idea what the NRL want this tackle to be and they have to come out tomorrow and explain what tackle they want in this situation.”
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NRL makes key change amid high tackle crackdown
Johns also blasted the bunker’s ability to stop play and retrospectively send players to the bin for incidents that were missed at the time. And tellingly, the NRL will instruct bunker officials not to do that moving forward.
“There’s been no policy change, but obviously the implementation of the policy is where the issue is and the bunker intervening,” Abdo told News Corp on Monday. “It’s meant for serious acts of foul play and I think that there have been instances where it hasn’t met that threshold.
“So we want to obviously reinforce that threshold with the referees, particularly the bunker, because it does have an impact on the game when you pull it back and no one likes that, right? It’s really there for howlers. It’s really there for an exceptional, serious act of foul play.”
Johns said on Sunday: “The breakdown of this sending players to the bin is absolutely farcical. It’s gone beyond a joke. It is embarrassing. The over-analysis and the overreach of the bunker in play … the bunker should be used only for try-scoring opportunities unless it’s a send-off. If it’s an out-and-out send-off and they miss it, then fair enough, come in and send the player off.
“Going back eight plays in a set of six where the referee doesn’t see it, the touch judges don’t see it, the players don’t see it … to send someone to the bin is absolutely farcical.”
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Disconnect between referees and match review committee
Tellingly, there’s already seems to be a disconnect between the on-field calls being made and the match review committee. In recent years, a sin-bin has traditionally equated to a grade-two charge from the match review committee and at least a one-game ban. But the NRL has lowered the marker for a sin-bin in recent weeks, with officials believed to be happy with fines in some instances.
Across the opening eight rounds, there have been 31 players sin-binned for dangerous acts. Of those, 17 have received suspensions and 12 have been fined. On two occasions, the match review committee cleared them altogether.
In contrast, the match review committee has handed out 13 suspensions to players who were not sin-binned on field. It means that of the 44 players sin-binned or suspended this season, the bunker and match review committee’s stances have been different on 15 of them.