Former NRL hardman Martin Lang has slammed Mitch Barnett’s six-week suspension for that sickening hit on Panther Chris Smith as too soft.
Few people in the game’s history have been knocked out more than Lang, whose straight, hard-running style made him an easy target for opposition forwards in the game’s bad old days in the 1990s and 2000s.
Lang copped the heavy-handed treatment without complaint during his distinguished career, which included a premiership with Penrith, but has been studying the effects of concussion while doing a PhD in Neuroscience, and didn’t hold back on the Knights forward on social media today.
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“Irrespective of neurological impairment, six-week bans for incidents such as this are not an adequate deterrent,” Lang posted on Twitter.
“The ‘game’ was inadvertently complicit in what occurred throughout my career.
“Modern research suggests this penalty is extremely disappointing.”
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Lang, who is also an ambassador for the University of Queensland’s Queensland Brain Institute (QBI), declined to discuss the matter further when contacted by Wide World of Sports due to the nature of his ongoing studies.
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