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Before we go any further, I’m not going to argue that the NRL judiciary is crazy, inconsistent or that there needs to be an investigation. I’m not Geoff Toovey.
It takes 80 minutes at the end of a thirty-week NRL season to win a grand final. On Tuesday night at a NRL judiciary hearing, it took just 11 minutes for Issac Luke to be denied that chance through suspension.
We can debate the merits of his suspension all we like, and other Roar writers will do exactly that.
We need to recognise that removing a player from the chance to play in a grand final decider is far too harsh a penalty. Some simple facts reflect this. There is one NRL decider each year. Even the theoretical pinnacle of the game, State of Origin, comes with three bites at the cherry per season.
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But quite apart from that, I’d be willing to bet the contents of my punting account that a poll of players would show that if given the choice between playing in a winning State of Origin team or winning a premiership, the majority would choose the premiership.
That’s why rubbing a player out of the game that decides that is an unfair and disproportionate penalty. But here’s the solution.
For grand finals, a suspended sentence should be available. This would work by handing down a suspension to the player, but allowing the guilty party to serve that suspension in a later game. Any other game but the grand final.
This would be available at the discretion of the judiciary, meaning some common sense options would be available to the panel. The NRL could also put some rules around that discretion. For example, a coward punch when their opponent wasn’t looking or intentional trip (cough, Josh Reynolds) would mean that the discretion would not be available to that player.
But for an unintentional high shot that bounced up off the ball or a lifting tackle that caused a player to fall awkwardly due to momentum, the panel could weigh up all the alternatives and hand down a suspended penalty.
This would be simple to implement, as there is already a grading system that players are charged with to determine the seriousness of their offence.
Our actual legal system has exactly this kind of discretion with sentencing built into it after hundreds of years of evolution and refinement for one reason – it makes good sense.
Unfortunately under the current NRL system, fans are robbed of seeing the best players playing in the biggest game of the season. Cameron Smith suffered the same fate a few years ago, changing what would have been an even match into a 40-0 thrashing.
Now a loyal one-club player who has played over 150 games will miss his team’s first chance to win a premiership in 43 years, a chance which he contributed to in a big way. And that doesn’t seem fair.
What’s your opinion Roarers? Is suspended sentencing a solution that the NRL should consider for the grand final or other big games?
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