Newcastle Knights forward Jack Hetherington should count himself lucky after receiving one-match ban, says NRL

“I can make it very clear, and want to make it very clear, that in the case of Reed Mahoney, the only thing that he is answerable for, which he is now deciding whether he is going to contest or not, is what happened on the field,” Annesley said.

“There is no element of blame whatsoever for Reed regarding what happened in the tunnel, and the reason that Jack Hetherington was charged with a grade-two offence was a combination of what happened on the field, and what took place in the tunnel. And that’s why he was charged with a higher grade.”

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The two teams were involved in a scuffle on the field before Hetherington and Mahoney were sin-binned in the game’s dying minutes, but Annesley said there was nothing obvious in audio of the incident that sparked the off-field drama.

Annesley said referee Gough took all necessary precautions to avoid an incident like this occurring but Hetherington took matters into his own hands.

“There is a way it can be avoided, and what the referee did on the field was exactly what he should have done,” he said.

“He knew that it was a tricky environment at the time – players were still at each other – and he sent Jack to the bin, and then waited a considerable amount of time in fact, probably longer than you would see in that situation, before he then followed up with Reed.

“And there was a significant amount of space between them, enough time for that incident to never happen. And that’s why, there’s just no excuse for that. He’ll [Hetherington] play a relatively small price, in terms of a one-match suspension, but very fortunate that it didn’t develop into something more serious because it would have been a very different outcome in terms of penalty.”

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