The game has gone. Ridiculous.

Makes me long for the days of wrestling on World of Sport. When sport was less fixed…

Paul Vaughan has been suspended for four matches following tonight’s independent tribunal hearing Vaughan, who was charged with a Grade E offence, pleaded not guilty The Club is extremely disappointed with tonight’s verdict and are exploring options with regards to an appeal.”

What’s to explore, they appeal and then appeal the appeal, seems to be the standard route these days.

got to say that is a ludicrous suspension.

the games now at the point where you can get 1-2 games for a cannonball, that might end someone's season.... and 4-6 games for helping a cheat to get up off the floor.

what a mess.

That’s called confirmation bias. It’s like when all the inbred f@ckw!ts seem to support Stains. Oh, my bad, that’s a proven fact…let me get back to you on that.

Thats me done with this once great game. I used to love RL but the game is all and done, i switch off lots of games already as the general standard is getting worse, penalties are soft, the bans ludicrous. A player gets almost the same length of ban for verbal abuse as someone only a few years ago that knocks a player out, punches him again when he's on the deck unconcious and finishing his career. 4 game ban for a tug on the shirt. I'm done. All the best.

A very damaging decision by the half-wits in charge. I can only think that they are terrified by the threat of legal litigation and player safe-guarding. This direction, this course will see the end of top level RL in the UK. The soul of the sport is being removed. The 'thing' that compels you to watch and love the sport is being bleached out of existence.

Sorry if I've missed this point.

How in the name of holy heck does the MRP justify their on field officials, the ever lovin' Mr S et al, not spotting this?

Surely if this is a 4 gamer, the whole nation would have held its breath as the red card was revealed??

Fact is, the MRP have used their hindsight to ignore the fact that SM was fine and dandy, jus cheatin'.
EVERYBODY could see what happened but ONLY the irrelevant has beens saw a 4/6 game ban

Love off RFL. You've lost a few quid ticket sales from my family for your Tonga series.

Wire, arrange three reserves games as quick as you like.

RFL MRP Cullen; you are a disgrace, an embarrassing stain on the game

Club appealing it with a statement from Matautia apparantley.

I don't even think Matautia was cheating; he was just getting up slowly as we would expect any player to in the last minute of a game with one score in it.

There was literally nothing in the incident whatsoever. The suspension is crazy and I'm another left wondering if the game is worth bothering with when common sense appears to have gone completely out of the window.

Wonder if the video guys at the club have pulled an all nighter, every game they've got access to this season where this has happened in the same circumstances thar hasn't been pinged.

Can't really enforce anything like that. You can get hurt without getting injured. If you take a big hit, tweak your knee or your ankle, get the wind knocked out of you etc you can be slow getting up and then just be fine. Literally nobody can make that judgement and trying to sets a very dangerous precedent.

As for the situation, I understand its incredibly frustrating considering Sione was fine, but I also completely understand why that punishment is there. I said on redvee I think we should let the refs deal with this sort of thing so players don't feel the need to try and take it into their own hands. If somebody is getting up excessively slowly, let the ref either stop the clock, or make a signal with his hands for 10 seconds to be knocked off the clock (or both if the player stays down). That way it wouldn't matter at all if the player is legitimately hurt/injured or not, as the time they've taken has been mitigated and now they can either get treatment or not.

I also think the green card should be used more, and probably shown to any player that stays down injured (not gets up slowly, but stays down). Both of these things together should largely see the play acting get stamped out of the game a bit.

The 6 again rule is making the time wasting at the end worse. Because if there's 10-15 seconds left, players are just holding down and taking the , or staying down and taking the , because any penalisation is just going to be a 6 again, which doesn't stop the game ending. You can just hold down for 20 seconds and the game is over whether you get penalised for it or not.

I hope for their sake they haven’t; it would be a huge waste of their time, and an excellent way to have Vaughans ban extended on frivolous appeal. Comparability is not a defence (“you can’t convict me for murder because look at all these murders which have gone unpunished”).

Given it went straight to tribunal, any successful appeal would need to show error in either the charge, the grading or the process. I’m not sure the grounds for the grading in this circumstance (if it were a high tackle, you would need to evident it was careless rather than reckless for example) and the charge unfortunately seems pretty iron clad (I don’t think anyone denies he did do it) which probably means the only recourse is if they didn’t follow their own processes at the tribunal (Saints recently tried this on one of Lees’ bans … it did not go well).