Melbourne Storm forward Trent Loiero has escaped a suspension despite being charged over a ‘cannonball tackle’ on Saturday night.
The last thing the Storm needed was another body on the sidelines, after losing a trio of players to injury during their come from behind win over the Wests Tigers.
Loiero has been fined $1000 after being hit with a grade one dangerous contact charge for the incident, which left Tigers backrower Luciano Leilua hobbling around. Thankfully, he escaped serious injury.
READ MORE: Dragons snap awful losing streak
READ MORE: Tigers boss fumes about missed opportunity
READ MORE: Robbo’s big worry over new NRL head knock system
Remarkably, it is the only incident referred to the MRC from the opening six games of the NRL men’s season so far.
The ‘cannonball’ has crept back into the game recently, after a crackdown on the style of tackle in the mid-2010s.
A cannonball is when a defender launches themselves at the legs of the ball runner while they are being held upright by other tacklers – of course, both coaches had opposing opinions of the incident.
“I didn’t see it closely, but I thought he was still moving,” Storm boss Craig Bellamy said post-game.
“If they’re standing up and they’re not moving, you can’t go in and do that, I thought he was still moving – I might be wrong, I might be proven wrong there.”
His Tigers counterpart Michael Maguire was reluctant to speak on the incident, but said that he was concerned cannonballs were making a comeback.
Stream the NRL Premiership 2022 live and free on 9Now.
“It’s something that the game needs to watch. It’s pretty dangerous, and it’s a bad tackle if it’s done on someone,” he said.
“You can see there that (Leilua) was hobbling around for a fair while, but I’ll let the game sort that out.”
For a daily dose of the best of the breaking news and exclusive content from Wide World of Sports, subscribe to our newsletter by clicking here!