Doubts over Brisbane rookie Kobe Hetherington's send off against the Raiders have been vindicated after the NRL Match Review Committee decided not to ban the first year player.<\/p>\n
The young Broncos forward was expelled from the game by referee Chris Sutton but replays showed Hetherington's contact was circumstantial and he would have found it virtually impossible to avoid it in real time.<\/p>\n
Despite the send-off, Hetherington was handed a $1500 fine and will not miss any Broncos games.<\/p>\n
Hetherington braced for contact on Raiders backrower Corey Harawira-Naerea when the latter was ankle tapped by another Brisbane defender.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Harawira-Naera fell suddenly and his head accidentally collided with the shoulder of Hetherington, injuring the Raiders forward.<\/p>\n
Play was stopped and referee Sutton got advice from the video review official before pointing to the sheds. The rookie disputed the call and was heard on microphones asking: "Are you serious?" He leant into it."<\/p>\n
Sutton was clear about the recent directive given to game officials but instead of sitting Hetherington for ten minutes, he was booted from the game.<\/p>\n
"It's direct to the head with the shoulder, straight off," the referee said.<\/p>\n
"It's direct mate, that's the way we rule it."<\/p>\n
In other charges arising from last night's games, Gold Coast star Kevin Proctor is facing a two-game ban for a grade two careless high tackle and Roosters hooker Ben Marschke will miss up to three for a grade two dangerous contact charge in the Tricolours win over the Titans.<\/p>\n
https:\/\/twitter.com\/WarrenSmithFOX\/status\/1403669913705746433?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw<\/a><\/p>\n Rugby League commentator Warren Smith described Hetherington's send off call as a "joke".<\/p>\n "And there it is. The send-off that will send the NRL into a spin, because Kobe Hetherington will be cleared by the judiciary, the refs and bunker suddenly won't know where they're at re high contact, and we'll be back to square one. That's a joke of a decision."<\/p>\n NRL legend Cooper Cronk also admitted he was confused over the direction of the crackdown.<\/p>\n "To be honest I am confused as a fan of the game over what is a send-off and what is a sin bin and what is on report," Cronk said on Fox Sports.<\/p>\n "When there is a high tackle in the game it is basically a lottery to determine what will happen.<\/p>\n "We saw Kevin Proctor just on report and no sin bin earlier today. The Hetherington one, I get it that it is pretty forceful in a contact sport.<\/p>\n "But there was an ankle tap that contributed to that, so I think when there is something that contributes to that position it can be on the lesser scale so this one could be a sin bin.<\/p>\n "If that was straight up contact with the head with no one interfering with it then bang you're straight off, see you later, but I thought they missed the mark tonight on this one."<\/p>\n For a daily dose of the best of the breaking news and exclusive content from Wide World of Sports, subscribe to our newsletter by<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0clicking here!<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Doubts over Brisbane rookie Kobe Hetherington's send off against the Raiders have been vindicated after the NRL Match Review Committee decided not to ban the […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84370"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=84370"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84370\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":84372,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84370\/revisions\/84372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=84370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=84370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=84370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}