The NRL has confirmed Melbourne giant Nelson Asofa-Solomona was not punished heavily enough for a dirty shot during Saturday’s clash with Parramatta.
The two-metre tall prop wound up a closed fist and swung it into the head of Eels player Makahesi Makatoa, who was carrying the ball.
Asofa-Solomona was allowed to remain on the field, and the following day the match review committee charged him with only a grade-one careless high tackle.
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The grading of the charge allowed the Storm forward to escape with a $1000 fine, and he will miss no game time at all for the dog shot.
NRL’s head of football Graham Annesley confirmed Asofa-Solomona should have been sin-binned, if not sent off for the rest of the game.
“In my view, and in the view of others in the (NRL) organisation that have looked at it and discussed it this morning, is there was certainly enough in that tackle to warrant the player being sent to the sin bin,” Annesley said.
“Based on the circumstances of the tackle, the nature of the contact, that it should have been reviewed by the Bunker and the advice to the referee should have been to send Nelson to the sin bin.”
Annesley confirmed the NRL also disagreed with the grading of the charge by the MRC.
The MRC is an independent body employed by the NRL, but the governing organisation has no input or power over decisions made by the committee.
A grade two charge would have resulted in a suspension for Asofa-Solomona.
“The match review committee don’t just sit around and have a chat and say ‘what do you reckon?’, and then flip a coin,” Annesley said in defence of the committee.
“They go through this matrix, taking all these factors into consideration, and they do this on every single incident they assess.
“Should it have been a grade two? That’s the general question – most people are suggesting that grade one wasn’t sufficient.
“We have a responsibility at the NRL to… allow the match review committee to conduct their deliberations independently, so we play no part in those discussions. We have no ability to have input into that.
“We are entitled to have an opinion, like everyone else. So we have a responsibility to review the decisions of the MRC and determine whether, in our view, they got things right, or whether perhaps they missed the mark.
“Our view of this particular incident is…we are confident the (MRC) have been through the right process, they have considered all of the right factors, but we don’t think they have placed enough emphasis on the level of force.
“They assessed the level of force as low to moderate – in management we are of the view the level of force was more than that.
“We think that level of force was enough to push the charge into the grade two category.
“We disagree with them on this count.”
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