Quote: 71leyther "It happened right in front of me and it was as bad as it looked! Higson collected the ball and finished by sliding on his backside facing upwards. The culprit was actually Leueui (not Ah Van, sorry Alan) who dropped across Higson's unprotected throat with his forearm - an absolute cheap shot.
What was more concerning to me was that Thaler was only a few feet away from the incident and - from what I could see - appeared to have a clear view of it. Moreover, he blew immediately the blow was delivered (in my view he saw it as a serious offence). However, as we know, Thaler ducked the decision but if the culprit had been Gaz or Jamie Acton, I wonder what he would have done?
(The incident can be seen at 29mins 15 secs in on the recording available on the OurRL app btw).'"
The replay after the incident shows what happened, contact is with Higson's left arm. There is no contact with the throat whatsoever. The commentators get it just about bang on.
If you pause it on contact you can see that Higson's injury probably occurs as it ends up as a bit of an accidental crusher tackle where higson's head is stuck between the widnes players body and his right arm. At full speed that is a total accident and didn't warrant the reaction it got from the Leigh players.