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.

Surely the game should now be replayed with Bradford only being allowed 12 men?

Better out for Salford than Hull.

Foaming over this. What is dangerous about it? He hits with his should, it wasn't high. It wasn't late as Silverwood didn't blow the whistle. You are told as a 5 year old to play for the whistle!!!!!

On another note this guilty plea is a joke. If we contest it and automatically get found guilty, then the RFL will automatically give a player the maximum ban. We could have had a situation of Elimas getting two games & Bridge getting one game

wasnt fosters challenge just as bad as leading with the knees when a player is in the act of scoring. whithead was already on the floor and i think had collected the ball before foster started to aim his kick.it was reckless and putting an opposition player at risk while not putting himself in too much danger.

I can't help but wonder if it had been BJ that clattered into him, would the outcome be the same? Possibly not, but I'd say that this incident was similar to Sammut in terms of severity so I expect he'll be gone for next week. Not that I agree with it though, there seems to be a lot of minor offences being given 1 game bans. Perhaps time to look at making use of the sin bin for such incidents.

I'd noticed section 2.9 Adey. But the mitigating/aggravating issues are decided at the trbunal hearing and part of early guilty plea system is the the players gives up the right to a hearing. So Im not convinced mitigating/aggravating issues are taken into account. looking at the adjudications for bridge and sammut, first couple of names I could think of who have used early plea shows no entries in that part of adjudication form. Description of charge to be awarded in case of a early plea (with example shown being for a grade B charge) doesnt seem to leave much doubt either.

Which bit are you struggling to understand? The game had stopped. Gaskell didn't even have the ball FFS.

The ball was loose, the rfl has ruled.

Lets just not bother tackling anymore, lets elbow them in the head or better still kick them in the face. That will do.

Elima dropped on someone without the ball and, regardless of whistles or knock on's, you can't do that. He had plenty of time to pull out so he's got no-one to blame but himself.
Good to see some aggression in our pack though just needs directing a bit better.

The game hadn't stopped to be fair to Elima, not until the ref blows his whistle. It's very easy to say what he should of done when watching it in very slow motion replay. If Gaskell had caught the ball, Stevo would have been calling it a 'wow of a hit'. I have stated before that I feel the disciplinary are handing out a fair few 1 game bans for fairly minor incidents. RL is a tough contact sport, it is the reason I enjoy watching the game. I don't want to see every slightly late challenge being referred to a hearing.

I guess it is consistent with the Sammut ban though, whether that consistency remains until nearer the play offs remains to be seen.

Gaskell dropped the ball, dropped to his knees, everyone stopped, I went to make a cup of Yorkshire Gold, let it brew for the requisite 4 minutes, came back in just in time to catch Elima flattening him. It was that marginal.

You obviously need to watch the incident again if you think Gaskell was on his knees when Elima made contact.

He was on his knees afterwards...

Finally you've posted something sensible on this topic