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Opinion
There have been a lot of people calling for the St George Illawarra Dragons forward Tyrell Fuimaono to get a massive ban, wanting a suspension far in excess of the five games he will actually miss.
While there are really good reasons for him to miss many more games, the system as it operates won’t do it.
Looking at the ‘tackle’ that the 100kg forward enacted on a winger 10kg lighter, there is a pretty good argument for Fuimaono copping a bigger suspension.
Then when you consider he has been suspended in the last two years for a similar act it’s even harder to argue against the punishment being much harsher.
And worst of all, when you consider Haze Dunster had his season ended because Fuimaono’s illegal action ruptured the 22-year-old Eel’s ACL, PCL and MCL, you can really understand calls for the same sort of suspension being given to the Dragons forward that was handed out to Bob Cooper, Les Boyd or John Hopoate way back when.
Cooper copped a 15-month ban in 1982, Boyd was rubbed out for 12 and 15 months for acts of thuggery in the early 1908s while Hopoate was suspended for 17 games in 2005 for what would be his last disgraceful act on an NRL field.
The NRL charged Fuimaono with “dangerous contact – other,” which carries only a three-game suspension with an early plea, bumped up by 50 per cent for his prior similar offence in the previous two seasons, and another 20 per cent for prior non-similar offences in the last two seasons.
Tyrell Fuimaono of the Dragons is sent off for an alleged illegal shot on Ryan Papenhuyzen in 2021 (Photo by Bradley Kanaris/Getty Images)
After taking the early plea, Fuimaono will miss just the first five instead of a possible seven rounds of the season.
On the flip side, Dunster – the young Kiwi from Rotorua, by way of the Wentworthville Magpies – now has to undergo a total knee reconstruction, followed by a minimum of six gruelling months of intensive rehabilitation, all the while hoping surgeons can make his knee functional and strong again.
Not only will he miss an entire season in the prime of his career, this injury may mean his prime has passed. It is unlikely he’ll ever be ever to run as fast again, or be as agile. And that knee will always be a risk of going again.
Speaking as a fellow reconstructee, while your knee can get better, it is never the same. Just last year I had to have another surgery on mine – busted while playing hacky sack while drunk – to remove detritus and stop it seizing up all the time. And I only did my PCL and busted my patella.
The Fuimaono tackle did to Dunster’s knee the equivalent of what Jason Gillespie’s shoulder did to Steve Waugh’s nose in Sri Lanka in 1999.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGu1eMhkAzc
It totally smashed it.
It is one thing for a person like me to do my knee. It is another entirely for a professional sportsperson. This is Dunster’s career, but the sensational speed of the man they call “Blazer” may never return.
And that is one of the main things that made him such a talented prospect. In his 13 games at the top level with Parramatta, the kid was fast. Really fast. But the Fuimaono hip drop in the 13th minute of Sunday’s trial may have ended that in an instant.
(Photo by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)
It has been revealed that Fuimaono’s sister, Taliah, has been in a relationship with Dunster for the past six years.
That awkward connection doesn’t detract from the fact that it seems inconceivable that Fuimaono, a repeat hip drop offender, can miss just five matches for such a dreadful act.
What warning does that provide to other players to get that sort of ‘tackle’ out of their game?
Now juxtapose that punishment with Cronulla’s Braydon Trindall getting a two-match ban for a careless high tackle on Penrith’s Thomas Jenkins which many – including myself – thought was not worthy of a penalty, let alone a stint in the sin bin.
Jenkins clearly slipped at the line and his head accidentally collided with Trindall. Shades of Broncos forward Kobe Hetherington getting sent off in 2021 for having Canberra prop Corey Harawira-Naera fly into his shoulder. I’m not sure how Trindall could have avoided it.
Yet Fuimaono will miss just three more matches than the Sharks half.
The match review committee grading system analyses the level of incidents themselves and then those gradings are negatively impacted by previous offences, or – conversely – reduced by good records.
That Fuimaono’s offence only warrants five games shows their methodology needs an urgent review.
The hip drop is outlawed and needs a specific grading that is in the ‘reckless’ zone. You can put the cannonball and grapple tackles in there with it. Further, a repeat offence of a reckless act needs to be met with very heavy sanction to really bring the point home that it is not acceptable.
But to really make the grading system robust, it needs to see the inclusion of the impact of the offence being considered. That is just a reflection of the real world.
If someone goes drink-driving and gets caught by the police, they can expect a licence suspension, big fines and prohibitive insurance costs. We all know that.
We also know that if a person drives under the influence and causes a crash that kills people they can rightly expect to go to jail.
Similarly, if a person assaults another on the street they can expect to be charged for it and face the courts. If they assault someone and cause them permanent disability or damage then they can rightly expect to go to serve time behind bars.
In these scenarios, if the person is a repeat offender then the punishment is likely to be much heavier. These heavy punishments work brilliantly as disincentives for the majority of our society.
Heavy disincentives will also work in the NRL. Judiciary chairman Jim Comans’ crackdown in the early ‘80s was extremely effective in starting rugby league in Australia on the path away from the endemic thuggery that was an enormous blight on the sport.
While it is impossible to know whether Fuimaono’s action on Dunster was deliberate – and the family link suggests it almost certainly wasn’t – these are the facts:
Given all of that, Fuimaono only missing five games means that something is seriously busted in the system.
Maybe even as badly busted as Dunster’s knee.