Elima's up before beak tomorrow on a grade B charge. 1-2 match ban. question is should we contest it and risk getting 2 match's or just take early plea option and the guarantee of only serving 1 match?.
Get it out of way against salford when presumably Langley will be back and have Elima available for hull game.

Had it been, say Wilkin on Jeffries (and yes, there WERE some late tackles on him) I suspect we would all have been screaming for Wilkin's blood? It did look unnecessarily late, although why are they going for "dangerous" rather than "late"?

I can't believe this. What was wrong with it?

I think we should contest it, and show evidence of...er...every other good tackle ever made.

I forgot to set it to record, and the edited replay didn't show this incident, so I haven't seen it except on the screen in the ground. Looked late and high to me then and said at the time he was going to get at least one for it.

Oh, and to make things even more confusing for us: Jamie Foster's incident with Elliot Whitehead will not be charged, deemed 'penalty sufficient'

Correct decision IMO.

Agreed, but I think Elima's shuld have been pen sufficient too.

It was a late challenge, but it was penalised at the time. The ref had a good view of it. Not sure why it need be taken further at judiciary if the officials at the time deemed a penalty was enough.

However the way things are going with disciplinery decisions I'd accept an early guilty plea.

Indeed, where is the consistency?

Maybe theyve had a match report calling it 'too aggressive a tackle'? ( think that's what I heard him telling elima penalty was afforded for when I watched game on rerun).
Don't think we can really argue that it was later or he didn't have time to pull out so doubt we can get charge overturned. Tend to think were better of taking early plea option considering games coming up and available players. Hull have big pack and we need our bigger forwards available for that match IMO.
Also a bit suspicious of how disciplinary are oing to treat cases where early plea isn't used. Suspect they give out sentences at higher end of range to encourage it's use. Has anyone not given a early plea yet who had the option, and how were they sentenced within the range available?

Not too bothered about that. Correct decision IMO. At least silverwood had bottle to award a eight pointer and give the team offended against some benefit. He could easily have just put it on report and then saints next opponents would have got the benefit of an almost certain ban( assuming foster is picked for next game after his shocker that is).

wouldn't that be another benefit for saints?

Don't think so, it'll be interesting what happens when they do. It could have a big impact on whether others follow their lead.

I don't really like the whole idea of pleading guilty without a hearing. So far it appears that admitting you're guilty automatically guarantees a ban. If you happen to go up to Red Hall you run the risk of getting much worse. We all know how inconsistent the disciplinery committee is so maybe clubs are afraid of putting their case?

I agree that if it was a shot against one of our players we'd probably be looking for blood.

i think they've had to deem it as dangerous as Elima made a fair point to Silverwood at the time that he hadn't actually blown his whistle to stop play so therefore he was entitled to "play-on".

IMO that would have been fine had he not then deliberately tried to knock the guys head off... hence the dangerous charge.

By definition for anything other than a grade A offence they have to give a ban. Early plea guidelines say they can only give minimum ban from the range allowed for that grade. They don't have option of fines or warning letters for anything above a grade A if I'm reading guidelines correctly.

Rule 2.9 in the Sentencing Guidlines COULD give a get-out for the panel to step outside of the guidelines AND below, due to mitigating factors.

I'd not want to put any bets on eligible mitigating factors here, though.

And this "early guilty" plea business is just the same as accepting a fixed motoring offence penalty, instead of going up before the beak and risking getting a hammering at the top end of the sentencing options - for having the temerity to contest the charge and wasting the court's time in search of justice. As far as I can see?

Seems that way.

Can he plea? When was his last ban?

Feb 2010.

Disco.

Let's face it, he's going to get a ban for this. It's just inevitable that it will be perceived as worthy of a ban, even though it didn't look all that bad to me at the time.

Might as well make the early plea and accept the one match ban. I think we can manage without him for Salford, especially if Langley can come in.

Can Elima take an early guilty plea?

Yeah. Only thing that prevents that I think is if you've picked up a ban in the 12 months before.

And guess what, he has entered a guilty plea.

One match ban. F*ck.