And now walmsley as mastered that art..as well as playing the ball 5 yards forward from where he was tackled

In his defence though, five yards for him is just one step forward.

I've said all I need to say about the actual incident. The ban itself is clearly warped by three things (In that order).

1) The embarassment of the appeal last year. They've treated Saints differently to other clubs all year and this is another clear and obvious inconsistency with other decisions in the same match and others this weekend
2) The injury and Paul Cullen's relationship to Cooper. Typical RFL awkwardness allowing Cullen to be in that position. But the injury is the main drive for the charge. Without the injury, there is no charge for the incident. They have set a precedent now though that injuries are a factor in disciplinary outcomes.
3) His record. 44 citings in 5 years, not 2 years or even 18 months as people are making out. It's not that horrendous a record and if you remove the not-guilties and the silly (But clearly not dangerous) late hits, he's on about 5 charges in 5 years, one of which was the farcical holding the Salford player's arm behind his back last season. A monster he is not, far more reckless and cynical players in the league and in the teams involved in the derby.

Whatever your take on the incident is, I think we can all agree that giving Knowles the same ban as Dudson, who punched a grounded and indefensible player in his head/throat is simply wrong. Consistency and common sense with these decisions is something we'll never see until we get some competent people into the panel and the RFL in general.

I’m getting concerned for Saddened now this is a really testing time for him

You've been reading too much redvee, don't let yourself be convinced by their nonsense. Knowles (and the rest of the Saints squad) has got away with lots that he shouldn't have in the past few seasons. All that's happened is the preferential treatment has ended and now they're facing the same as everyone else. He has previous in terms of some really poor tackles, wasn't it him that injured mcgilvary for 6 months last season? Jow he has injured Cooper for 9-12 months and potentially ended his career, Johnstone didn't even need a HIA yet the same ban. I agree with mcgilvarys tweet that these tackles need to be outlawed.

Dudson was being a prat, be was hardly trying to maim Johnstone, but it was absolutely stupid, he's lucky that his actions didn't cost us the match on Saturday, but now he sits out for 5 weeks and so he still let's the club down big time.

I too had briefly thought karetaker had gone mad, but he's just quoting Saddened on RedVee

That makes waaaaaaay more sense. Not the sentiment and content, that still makes no sense at all, but the origin of the content makes more sense.

That post just comes across as the ravings of a madman. I saw a redvee fb post trying to claim the disallowed try for a knock on was incorrect and it was grounded because downward pressure came from the forearm, forget the ball had been spilled and touched the ground before the forearm made contact, so it was a knock on.

It’s not about a player dragging another along it’s about the tackling player deliberately leaving the ground and putting undue pressure on the leg(s) of the player being tackled. Knowles had no reason to take the actions that he did in fact, if he had kept his feet in contact with the ground he could just as easily have effected the tackle.

I think Saddened had to take on a couple of staffers last night he was doing so much whining across multiple Internet platforms.

My biggest concern about the Panel is its inconsistency. Dudson should have got more than McGuire or was the "level" of punch taken jnto account. Fans see things which go unpunished and some of the Panel's comments about incidents confuse to say the least. No easy answers but the panel has gone too far in banning players for minor offences perhaps to justify its existence.

Knowles didn't concede a penalty for the McGilveray tackle. It was looked at and they decided there was nothing wrong with it. There wasn't. His tweet yesterday was bizarre and he should be fined for it. 'These tackles'? What do that mean? In the McGilveray one, he was overpowered by three Saints players, his upper body was turned back (As defending teams are taught to do, in order to maximise the time the ptb takes) and taken to ground. Knowles did not leave the floor at all or fall onto the legs of the player. He just got his leg caught trying to oppose the tacklers and make more progress. It was not a similar tackle to the one in the Wigan game and it was not a 'hip drop'.

The hysteria around the tackle in the Wigan game is bizarre. People have just seen the injury and decided it's got to be a bad tackle. In all seriousness, you cannot see Knowles doing anything illegal on the angles available on Twitter. On the main angle, you cannot even see him at all as he's hidden by Lussick. In this tackle he wrestles Cooper in an attempt to bring him down and there is a collision of four bodies and Knowles' knee hits Cooper's calf as he plants his foot on the floor in an attempt to fend off Lussick. It's just bad luck, there isn't a bad tackle there. He doesn't jump off the floor, he doesn't collapse his own body weight into the legs, in fact he's still on both feet after the injury, although he has lost his footing. But everyone has just jumped all over it hysterically because of the successful appeal, it's just ripped the scab off those wounds and the hysteria yesterday was because of that. If Cooper plays the ball, no one even mentions the tackle. There are Wigan fans bemused by it on Twitter and here, saying there's absolutely nothing in it. There are Warrington fans who don't see it as a bad challenge, former referees saying they can't see anything incriminating that Knowles has done. It's definitely the injury and the embarassment of the appeal last year that causes the severity of the ban, not the challenge itself.

The whole thing comes from the obsession Rugby League as a sport has with wrestling and getting the players down on their back. That is what Knowles is doing and that is what players are taught to do at all levels. Your scholars will be spending hours in the gym learning to rotate and spin players onto their backs. This is where the danger comes in, when you have three or four 18 stone men trying to pin a guy onto his back and the guy trying to oppose that and get down on his front, players are going to get hurt occasionally, it's sport. There is absolutely no intent from Knowles to injure Cooper and the suggestion he's a grub and does it deliberately is pathetic. He has zero previous charges for that kind of tackle, neither do Saints as a club, so the suggestion it's a club issue is also way off the mark. There were three other tackles of the same kind as what Knowles is alleged to have done this weekend, all far more blatant in terms of the deliberateness of the weight on the legs. No mention of those, no kangaroo court for those, no trial by social media for those players, because they were fortunate there was no serious injury.