Well worth signing up for. Can’t wait for more of these gems.

Hmm, part of the WA9 intelligentsia methinks....can't spell and no grasp of punctuation.

I suggest you stick to mopping.

Wow. I assumed it was some sort of pulling him up off the ground. I've just seen the clip posted by Matthew Shaw and he was already getting up!

So we play a sport where you’re allowed to knock 10 buckets of crap out of the opposition for 80 mins but a mere grab on the shirt sees you banned for 4 weeks. Make it make sense.

oh do bore off Mr self righteous. Your boys turn every tackle into a Greco-Roman wrestling bout and you come out with that boll@x! You whine on and on about the MRP ruining the game when one of your grubby little lot gets done. But you’re backing them for this? Saddened? Just sad I’d say.

I definitely think it's worth a conversation about it. It does seem far too harsh a charge, I agree with that and I'd be crying for leniency if it were a Saints player again, of course I would. But all I'm saying is they've clearly set the precedent for it with the previous bans. There is no difference between this one and the others. They were all highly likely to be uninjured, but the RFL said it isn't up to the players to make that call, hence the bans. It's such a tough one this, in hindsight, Mata'utia is fine, so it appears to be a ban for almost nothing. Had Mata'utia had a serious injury, Vaughan wouldn't have known. That's my point, do you get where that's coming from? When Vaughan takes hold of him he's still on the floor, lay on his side, all he's done is roll over. Walmsley sat up and tried to get up twice when he had a broken neck. If he had the ball and it was the last minute, he could end up in a far worse spot than he was if he was then pulled over. We can't just punish these if there is a serious injury and not if there isn't. It really is on the players to not touch them. It'd be great if the players didn't feign injury to get penalties and waste time too, but that's unfortunately present in all non-combat sports these days.

Looks like an absolute offence to me so no mitigation
Always guilty

If player's welfare is paramount - potential solution - any player getting up slowly in the last 5 minues of a game - clock stops - instant substitution and that player stood down for 11 days as with a grade 1 concussion in Oz. Might cut out the cheat's charter bit. I suppose one caveat - stand down not compulsory if foul play caused the 'injury' and a doctor passes the player fit. Apart from that no appeals, no ifs, no buts, no fetching your Philadelphia lawyers with some bizarre argument about the angle of flexion of the opponent's arm.... Otherwise we're getting into the ridiculous ends of games we see in NFL where a team winning can just keep 'taking the knee' to see out the clock.

I totally understand the not pulling up a potentially injured player and thought it was stupid of Vaughan at the time but understandable in the context of the game.
I do think though that a player pretending to be injured who is pulled at should get the same ban as the “puller”. That would be the fairest solution.
No doubt Saints would get in a psychiatrist to claim Matautia was suffering from PTSD rather than a physical injury but that is detail, it may work as a deterrent in both sides

https://www.seriousaboutrl.com/paul-vau ... dia-82241/

https://www.seriousaboutrl.com/paul-vau ... dia-82241/

Not surprised they are baffled by it. I don't really give a monkeys trump about what bans have been given out before ... perhaps they were wrong too. This is pathetic. I see holding down, twisting of legs, pushing heads into the ground after a tackle but this is a very gentle pull to get him to get on with the game.

The DC is making the game a laughing stock. The RFL needs to get a grip of them.

Helping an opposition player to regain his feet is a common occurrence after the ball has gone dead.

Will we now see the Disciplinary Committee banning players for this too?

We will be watching tick-and-pass rugby soon, the way the game is going.

Good observation.

The problem with the DC is that they show zero common sense or flexibility when dealing with individual cases.

It's quite obvious to everyone looking at the Vaughan incident what is going on - Player is winding down the final seconds of a close game, opponent light heartedly gives him a friendly tug to tell him to get up. Witness the smile on Vaughan's face and you know this is almost banter between the two.

Now this is totally different from what the law was set up for - If Vaughan had aggressively grabbed an opponent lay prone on the floor then that would be totally different to what actually happened and would deserve a punishment. But it's blindingly obvious this incident isn't that, so the DC should use common sense and look at the obvious context of individual incidents and don't just apply a single blanket judgement, which is what is presently happening.

The game is run by stupid people

You can't ban someone for a slow play the ball in the 79th minute of a professional RL game

He'd run 162 metres with the ball by that point and done 20 tackles. He played it like Konrad Hurrell does in the 4th minute after his first run. The refs could just deal with it by stopping the clock if they think it's being overly slow and if there is a 'fake' injury and they stay down, use the green card. That's what it's for.

As daft as this all seems, the solution to it is players not touching the ball carrier. The bans have to stay until players understand that. What they can't do is let Vaughan off (Because he was time wasting) then ban the next fool who does it when the player turns out to have had a serious injury.

The thing is Matautia never looked injured and everyone including the officials just saw that tired looking slow play the ball. However the Disciplinary just see things completely differently.

We had 2 season ending injuries by cannon ball looking reckless tackles on Walmsley and Passi by Asiati and the disciplinary see nothing and no charge zero bans

We have Vaughan with a slight pull on Matautis shirt who at that point was getting on his feet in a tired manner, disciplinary see different and a 4-6 match ban.

Crazzzzzzzzzzzzyyyyyyy

Currently it's a ban and yeah can understand the reasoning why but for me the length of the ban is the issue. The precedents SKD had just hit the leigh player with a high shot and potentially could have been injured. Mata'utia was similar action but the game context and the reaction of the player was different. For me it's a 1 match ban to reinforce the message don't touch and a directive to referees to use the green card powers to discourage the football style play acting.

Of course you can. That's the whole point of the argument. The DC needs to consider context and the whole situation of the incident and if they simply blanket ban Vaughan, then it's obvious they don't.

The committee absolutely SHOULD treat each incident individually, because every incident is different.

That's nonsense - what that actually means is you are saying it's up ot the player to decide whether he thinks a player is injured and the committee will then retrospectively judge whether he was right. That's a really bad approach to a rule like this.

Don't lift up a player after a tackle or you're likely to get a big ban. Nice and simple.

I agree this is really soft BTW but it's an important rule and there for a reason.

To show how ridiculous this charge is, its just been discussed on nrl 360(the week of their semi finals!). Suffice to say, they couldn't believe what they were watching. Aaron Woods looked genuinely gobsmacked. Is it any wonder the aussies see our game as a joke?

It isn't nonsense. This ruling encourages cheating. If we are really serious about having this rule, then to make it fair, then the cheat (Matautia in this case) should receive double the ban that player manhandling the player on the floor receives... I'm pretty sure we'd never see this charge ever appear again with the committee, because the cheats would quit with their time-wasting antics.

Not what I said and you know it.

Not what I said and you know it.