The stills don't look good but on the one replay I saw it seemed to happen very fast. I think there's room for doubt.

I don't know what's got into the players this year, the Makinson and Lineham incidents and now this. Has it always gone on and is only now being punished? It's very strange.

Meh, I reckon he missed with two of the three punches he threw. The disciplinary do seem to be a bit inconsistent though.

Bring back the biff. Sick of handbags at dawn, don’t get me wrong I don’t want to see punch ups every week but there’s nothing like a good old punch up in a game

I believe it was similar to direct contact to the head being a straight red. More a directive than an actual rule. They both lasted for around the same length of time too before being completely ignored

Don't you remember? That was exactly what was happening. There were two sendings off (sending offs?...who knows!?) In consecutive matches, one involving Charnley for Wire (can't remember who the other one was) where one was a genuine hit and the other no more than a tickle but both were sendings off due to the new directive. There was quite a bit of fuss about it at the time. Not dissimilar to Gildart getting sinbinned for rubbing someone's head and then it never happing again...