Wests Tigers coach Benji Marshall has described the NRL’s adjudication as a “lottery” with three of his players awaiting their fate with the match review committee.
His captain Api Koroisau was sin binned for a dangerous throw on Lindsay Collins in the second half against the Roosters while Adam Doueihi followed him not long after for a hip drop.
John Bateman was also placed on report for a high shot on Angus Crichton in the 66th minute.
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Post-game, Marshall vented his frustration, describing both sin bins as “harsh”.
“To be honest, I’m a little bit confused about them. Doueihi’s one in particular, I don’t know what he’s supposed to do? Sol (Solomona Faataape) puts on a good shot and sends him backwards and Doueihi’s just underneath him, so I thought that was a bit harsh,” he said.
“We had one put on report against us too, so we need a bit more and then obviously Api’s one, it could’ve went either way, I thought it was pretty harsh as well.
“… Doueihi tackled him from behind and he got hit from in front, so I don’t know. It’s hard to know, it’s like a lottery at the moment and we seem to be at the other end of them quite often.”
Asked for his thoughts, Koroisau said he “didn’t have many feelings” on his incident, stating he’d let the team down.
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Roosters coach Trent Robinson was also asked for his opinion and sympathised with Koroisau.
“To be honest, I’m not sure. It’s obviously a really dangerous tackle and you don’t have to be injured off that, because the consequences are really bad, obviously, on grabbing between the legs and turning them over,” he said.
“I don’t know if it’s 10 minutes or not, that’s me, someone might tell me I’m completely wrong but I think it changes the course of the game completely and I think that was the debate Wayne (Bennett) started a few days ago.
“There was a really good, honest discussion around the use of the bin and use of weeks out but we want to keep the integrity of the game and the contest of the game.
“I didn’t think it was 10 minutes, I said that in the box to the guys ‘I don’t think he’ll get 10 here’ and the Doueihi one I didn’t look at.”