Brawl erupts after furious Josh Papalii cops elbow to the face

So you are basically saying that any time a player resents whatever is happening to him in a tackle he can lash out with a nasty elbow? An ''accidental'' kick is just as fine? The bunker set a terrible trend by allowing Mitchell to charge 20 metres and exact retribution with a cheap shot and now they allow Crighton to take the law in to his own hands. The six again rule means you get great reward anyway from any sort of wrestle and the bunker needs to pull it's head in and deal with these grubby acts dressed up as accidents. ''Accidental'' elbows to the head with a full swing and follow thru are as acceptable as the old head high ''reflex action'' excuse. The onus is on the players not to maim their opponents like this.

Harry this is why I love RL -one man's accident is another man's careless tackle grade 3. Unfortunately the game has descended into Wrestlemania . By the way,can someone show me the reference to "milking" in the rule book ,Id like to see an interpretation of just what this means.

Does he throw an elbow or does he swing his arm to break free and the elbow is what hits Papalii? Maybe if the referee had penalised Papalii in the first place for holding him down it wouldn't have escalated. Except of course procedure now would be to rule 6 again, so that wouldn't have helped either.

The Rooster seem to get away with a lot of elbows and get penalties for the opposition retaliating. Papalii will have Crichton in his sights next game.

Am I the only one who didn't see anything wrong with this? The Raiders love to wrestle and Papali was all over him. Crichton obviously frustrated and wriggling around to try and get up and gets him with an elbow. IMO wasn't intentional at all. Thought Papali was actually quite lucky to stay on with his swinging arm afterwards.

None of my wrestling with mates when I was younger ever involved throwing an elbow and if it had we all would've yelled at our mate to ask him what the hell he thought he was doing. Every week we see defenders get penalised for high shots when the player they're tackling has slipped at the last second. For the life of me I don't see why that's a penalty but carelessly swinging your elbow into someone's head when you're trying to get up isn't. Every tackled player in the NRL wriggles and writhes to get up to play the ball but they nearly all manage to avoid elbowing someone in the head while they're doing it.

Have you guys ever had a bit of wrestle with some mates when you were younger? Ever cop an accidental whack when doing so? The Raiders wrestle - that has been their move for a couple of years. Crichton was trying to break out of the wrestle - use some momentum to propel his body up as Papali continued to push him back to the ground. Hence Papali accidentally gets whacked. If Raiders players are going to wrestle on the ground expect to get accidentally hit sometimes and don't react. Penalty was completely appropriate.

And the winner was?

Crighton did everything possible to give away a penalty but the bunker once again battles to notice the obvious. The bunker is really plodding along this year.

And yet somehow the Roosters end up with the penalty????