Melbourne Storm

[LP]

I don't understand how guys get their head's knocked off every tackle but they paid a foul near the end for glancing contact after a guy kicked it.

There is a lot of weird stuff in NRL, it comes across as somewhat arbitrary and disingenuous.

A week ago Nelson Asafa-Solomona got three weeks for basically being charged at by an opponent, an opponent who while sprinting at full pace turned his approaching head into 200cm Nelson's shoulder and knocked himself out. Nelson got suspended for 3 or 4 weeks basically for an opponent headbutting his shoulder, NRL deemed it a shoulder charge from Nelson. The NRL will claim Nelson has form with three earlier offences, but reality is opponents do it deliberately because being accused of a shoulder charge can force Nelson to be sent off into the Sin Bin for 10 minutes.

Last night a player blatantly shoulder charged an opponent, hitting the opponent high directly to the head with a shoulder turned into the impact, and wasn't even penalised.

Now in AFL, you can write this off as variation between multiple umpires, but in NRL there is only one referee, and we can't even claim the referee didn't see it because he publicly announced on the broadcast it's not a shoulder charge.