In this weeks (weaks) edition of soul crushing bewilderment; for those who expected anything other than Lawton was the right call as was wighton's then don't read on.
Starting off:
Annesley gave us all a long winded explanation about hip drops as we're all sausage roll eating morons. We were 'treated' to 4 examples. 3 hip drops and 1 not.
You would think with all the finger pointing at the Roosters being favoured over the last couple of weeks that Annesley wouldn't use a roosters example as a hip drop that wasn't.
But nope, example number 4 was JWH injuring a dragons player but it wasn't a hip drop. (Even if correct, which I think it was...read the room annesley!)
Annesley then said - sometimes even if a player is injured, if the intention wasn't there then accidents happen. (Keep this quote in mind re: Lawton).
Dogs v rorters:
We were then shown the incident where a knock on was missed, and the next play Tedesco scored.
Annesley puffed out his chest and said the bunker doesn't go back to plays other than the immediate one leading to tries. So yes, the ref missed it, but that's the line in the sand.
He then inexplicably said that maybe the captain should have used a challenge seemingly to forget that a captain can't go back and challenge that play! And of course no journo's mentioned this. f..m..d.
Lawton - easy dec to make as only one in the tackle. Said everyone accepted there was no intention. But if you lift a player bad things happen. Keep in mind he'd just said there was no intention in the jwh injury causing tackle so you can't suspend jwh.
wighton - two in the tackle so blah blah blah.
Ok, fair enough but there was a time not long ago where the nrl said the opposite:
Lawton: tackle gone wrong so a couple of weeks
Wighton: You put your arm between the legs and lifted so we're throwing the book at you. 4-5 weeks.
So I'm (manly) not sure (manly) when that (manly) thought process(manly) changed.
thank goodness...that was all.