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We need to talk about the judiciary

Jack Wighton was a key man for the Raiders in their NRL semi-final. (AAP Image/ Action Photographics, Jonathan Ng)
Roar Guru
12th March, 2015
79

On Wednesday night, Parramatta’s Junior Paulo was rubbed out of the game for a third of the season.

Charged with a Grade Three Dangerous Throw by the match review committee, Parramatta went to the judiciary seeking a downgrade.

The charge already carried more than 500 base points plus prior loading, seeing Paulo face seven weeks.

The Eels were hoping to have the charge downgraded to a grade two, seeing Paulo miss four weeks.

The tackle itself wasn’t that bad. The Eels forward picked up Matt Ballin and threw him into the ground.

Ballin more or less landed on his shoulder and the side of his face. Paulo didn’t drive him head first into the ground, he didn’t put his hands between Ballin’s legs.

Yet he still garnered a grade three charge.

The judiciary, for reasons unknown, decided to uphold the original charge and hand Paulo nine weeks.

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A ridiculous period of suspension for any player.

To put this in perspective, Jordan McLean, the player involved in the Alex Mackinnon tackle, was handed seven weeks.

Also charged in Round 1 was Mitchell Moses for almost decapitating William Zillman and Jack Wighton for throwing punches at Sosaia Feki.

Both men escaped suspension by entering early guilty pleas.

According to the judiciary and match review committee, it is completely fine to coat hanger a player, or punch them in the head, but throw a guy onto his shoulder or face and it’s nine weeks.

In my opinion, the judiciary needs to be seriously re-evaluated with their processes looked at.

The judiciary is essentially the NRL’s “court system”, as such it should be applying appropriate precedents to their proceedings as well as providing justifications to the sanctions that they hand out.

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It’s time for the judiciary to own up to why they make their decisions. There is no logical reason for them not to be able to publish reasons for the punishments that they hand out.

The judiciary currently has no consistency and no accountability.

It’s time that was changed.

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