Well, Groak is up tomorrow. I hope the grub gets the maximum.

Guess he'll get the reduction for a first offence [in the UK if he makes the early guilty plea.

Is Gaskell's reported jaw injury as a result of the Groat incident?

No jaw injury has been reported, so if he does have a jaw injury, then for all we know he could have done it shaving.

Groak should get the max for his grubby shot, regardless of whether he caused an injury or not.

I wondered about that too.

I think there have been rumours on twitter [shock horror, who would have thought that... but nothing actually from serious sources. Of course, they could be correct for once!

Groat gets a 3 game ban. Ridiculous.

Anthony England ony getting 4 for deliberately spitting at opponent too. The RFL disciplinary panel are unbelivably soft.

I agree with you on the Jaime bloem thing! He knows the ins and outs of the games and knows high shots happen in the spur of the moment! But on the other hand he will jump on any foul play and is consistent for both teams this is why we need more ex players reffing

To be fair, I'd bet most referees have played the game - though not necessarily at pro, or semi-pro level.

We don't "need more ex-players reffing", if you mean SL reffing as a career pathway for SL players, it is ridiculous. For one thing, just because you play SL doesn't mean you'd be any better at reffing than the Dalai Lama.

Surely someone who chose to be a referee at an early stage, and has had many years of officiating at various levels of the game until reaching the top level, is the only sensible route to fill the bulk of places. And nobody is stopping ex players from applying, are they?

Maybe Gareth Hock could take it up as he's been involved in all aspects of disciplinary over the years

From Grub groat's disciplinary:

"... where he was-obvious risk involved in lashing out in a reckless manner-resulted in broken jaw and opponent not expected to play for 8 weeks."

I make that 9th August, 2 weeks into the Super 8s.

But the grub is sorry, and didn't mean it. Basically Gaskell's fault for being that height.

So plenty of opportunities for Mullaney and Addy to work on their partnership...

Bloody typical! Would have put money on Gaskell missing part of 8's at beginning of season. Hopefully he will have a quick recovery and play the majority if not all the middle 8's.

Don't think we'll see mullaney addy pairing again. Suspect it will be sjelka plus one of them. Purtells comment in t&a about it being good having one of halfs back this weekend (sjelka) tends to back that up. I'd guess behind the scenes we're trying to juggle salary capto be able to bring sammut in for standoff role (even if only while gaskells out) but if that doesn't come off think we'll go sjelka/mullaney

It has to be Siejka with either Mullaney or Mendieka, and there are still a few opportunities to experiment with that. I'm not to concerned in the matches where we should dominate the ruck but now have concerns for matches against Sheffield, Fax and Leigh. Imperative that we secure position in top 2 then we can afford to lose a couple........ being second is fine, even several points behind first.

Lol, so has Jamie Bloem!

Could we please, please, please sign Jarrod Sammut?

You do understand how a salary cap works, right? You expect Jarrod to play for free?

I haven't seen this incident but it - and the aftermath - sounds similar to Rangi Chase's elbow attack on Tangi Ropati in the Challenge Cup match in 2012 which broke Tangis' jaw. Tangi was out injured for almost four months, and Chase got a farcical ban of three months. The incident is shown below, with a link to what Tangi looked like afterwards below it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCZHmfa4FbE www.mirror.co.uk/sport/other-spo ... is-1677043

I haven't seen this incident but it - and the aftermath - sounds similar to Rangi Chase's elbow attack on Tangi Ropati in the Challenge Cup match in 2012 which broke Tangis' jaw. Tangi was out injured for almost four months, and Chase got a farcical ban of three months. The incident is shown below, with a link to what Tangi looked like afterwards below it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCZHmfa4FbE www.mirror.co.uk/sport/other-spo ... is-1677043

The incident that created Gaskells injury looked deliberate as shown on Bulls TV (Doncaster game highlights) and as per the fairness rule Groat got 3 games, with Gaskell's injury maybe 8 weeks.

suppose it all depends how close to salary cap we are.

What rules apply re: a player who hasn't played for us in a competitive game i.e Peterson or Davies. I seem to remember that provided a player hasn't featured in a league or cup game (pretty certain friendlies don't count) then you can pay them off and release them and its like they never existed as far as cap is concerned.
I'm sure a team did something along these lines a few years back when they had a player with a long term injury. Wondering if something along those lines is being considered and is why Davies seems to never get mentioned anymore. Pretty certain his and Petersons appearances for Oxford wouldn't count as they were under dual reg so were registered to Oxford when they played.

Why don't you explain as apparently you're party to the Bulls live salary spend?

The grub Groat explained how he never menat to hurt anybody, guv, but he felt someone pull his shirt and he needed to get back to the defensive line like pronto. So urgent was this need that he thought "shall I push away the player who has hold of my shirt so that I can retire to the defensive line?" He dismissed this option, as apparently, to push the player off in such a way would somehow mean that no, he wouldn't get back to the defensive line quickly enough. Instead, his decision was that lashing out with his elbow would work quicker, and thus get him back in the defensive line with the desired alacrity.

But he never intended to elbow anybody, though.

Confused? Me too. A push stands a good chance of effecting a release. But a wild swing with the elbow would be quicker? Would it? How? if I push a player away, he may break his grip on my shirt. If I elbow him, though, he is unlikely to. Not unless I actually cause him serious pain, so much so, that he involuntarily lets go. So to me, his weaselly admission in fact serves to confirm that he hoped to cause serious pain with his elbow, otherwise it would be a pointless choice.

But nobody in the disciplinary seems to have worked this out.

It'll never happen, but really, in a case as clear cut as this, the offender should have to sit out as many games as the player he puts out of the game, if that is longer than his primary ban. Maybe then Groat might feel it was not worth saving a split second in his journey time if he risked putting himself out of the game for a few months, even if he wasn't bothered about taking the risk of crocking a fellow professional. And it would be only fair.

I just wonder what responsibility the match officials have in all this, they have a requirement to see to the player’s welfare and prevent dangerous play. Anybody who was at the match could see Doncaster were becoming frustrated and had started to take it out on the Bull’s players. Yet the officials do nothing until it ends up with players fighting (Leigh game) and Lee being elbowed. I know some of you will say “it’s a man’s game” – contact sport etc. but stiff arm tackles and the like are dangerous. Look at the times AOB gets clobbered.