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Let’s put on our serious faces and get real. If Issac Luke takes the field in this Sunday’s grand final, it will be the farcical peak of the NRL’s maligned corrective system.
After everything that’s happened this year and the sensitivity around lifting, the simple fact of the matter is that the hooker’s awkward tackle on Sonny Bill Williams in Friday’s prelim cannot go unpunished.
If the judiciary panel is going to be consistent with the league’s recent hardline stance – and yes, I know that consistency is hardly the NRL’s shtick – then this is a tackle that’s not even dubious, meaning the Match Review Committee’s decision is right and needs to be backed.
Legally speaking, under the new precedents, Luke’s tackle warrants a grading of ‘a wee bit naughty – could’ve been worse’, meaning some kind of smack on the buttcheeks is obligated, no matter how small. Grade one is spot on – but you can’t go any lower than that without it being deemed innocent.
So whoever is on the panel on Tuesday night – stuffing their pie-hole with free pizza from David Smith’s Amex because that’s how he pays them for their services – needs to simply assess this tackle for what it is and not be dumb, drunk or corrupt.
Assuming this selected panel of decision makers has watched footy this year and studied the arbitrary standards, they’ll do the right thing in the name of the NRL’s edict for safer and cleaner footy. They shouldn’t exonerate the Souths rake, thus avoiding complete embarrassment for themselves and the league and a tedious buildup of discussion about conspiracies.
Yeah, I know I’m a soulless devil-being with no consideration for the circumstances. I hear you loud and clear and agree. Luke doesn’t deserve this.
The hand is nowhere between the legs. Ben Te’o’s fingerprints are on it. Williams’ has publicly plead for clemency. They’re cousins. The hooker was fearing for his life.
They’re all bit-pieces that should count up to being enough to get him off, but it won’t and nor it shouldn’t.
And to those wailers in the gallery who are lobbying for an immediate change in the rules right this moment so the Kiwi hooker can play this weekend, nice try. But save your breath for the physical output you are about to exert on the pummelling you need to give yourself.
Every time this kind of unfortunate rule breaking happens to someone significant before an State of Origin, a grand final or a Tooheys Challenge television match, everyone makes the same calls to overhaul the thing. But it’s just common sense being overruled by emotion and empathy. Or maybe just a large gambling outlay. Whatever it is, it’s not going to change. Ever.
I know this is fart in an elevator kinda stuff for some, so to the Souths fans, big game apologists and spear tackle enthusiasts out there, just before you cluster bomb my condo in violent disgust at this utterly compelling argument, let me just say this.
I’m the first to smooch Luke’s feet for being such a ripper player. Even though he’s got some shady priors, I refuse to yield to populism and term him a grub. In fact, I reckon he’s a world class gem and the kind of mad unit I’d love in my team.
Plus, the tackle on Williams was hardly a horrendously filthy move with sinister intentions. It was an accident and he didn’t attack the contest with the aim to use the money man’s head like a jackhammer.
However, it’s still a dangerous position, and under the guidelines it’s off limits. Rules are rules, homies.
This was a nondescript white bread dangerous lift that warrants a minimum 125-point grading every day of the week, meaning it would be enough to miss a trial match, just like it would be enough to miss a game in Round 12 and regretfully, to miss a grand final.
So if the ruling is successfully challenged at Tuesday’s hearing, and grade one becomes grade zero, and the rugby league world implodes on itself and disappears in to a supernatural vortex of hell where video ref decisions take hours and biased English commentary plays through the speakers non-stop, it will mean that the system has run its process and deemed this tackle as kosher.
What type of message does that send? And how stupid will the NRL’s tough stance look? Stupider than a glass hammer, that’s what.
On a human level, there’s no doubt that this is a real cruel punch in the whiskers for Luke. It’s desperately crap timing. He’s an integral icon who’s waded through some low times, and of course, it’s been 43 years and all that jazz.
Unfortunately, he’s erred at the worst possible time, and the law bows for no sentiment or particular match size.
The NRL’s system needs to forego its usual loose standards for pre-showpiece rule-bending or it will be a right laugh – but not a funny one. And if it doesn’t?
At least Bulldogs fans will get to know what it feels like to be a Queenslander at Origin time.