TBF didn't the RFL once dock Wigan 4 points for 'breaking the salary cap' even though they didn't actually 'break' it?

A silly article. Tomkins let-off is truly awful, as you won't get many clearer incidents - he kicked the tackled man. The ref saw it, the players saw it, 10,000 people in the ground saw it and tens of thousands more viewers saw it. It should have resulted in a ban, but didn't. That's in-keeping with a long line of strange decisions from the disciplinary committee concerning Wigan players. Quins fans will recall a decision 5 or 6 years ago when a pie (Paul Johnson ?) launched a flying Cantona-style karate kick at a Quins player, only to emerge from the disiplinary with the message that he had been trying to effect the tackle legally. I'm sure we all have our favourites.



However, Leeds fans undermine their case if they deny any offences their own side committed. Buderus deserve his ban. It was a clear and deliberate spear tackle, and he should have been sent off in the game, as well as suspended afterwards. To suggest otherwise is merely to undermine the case against Tomkins by suggesting that all alleged offences are merely sour grapes on the part of the opponents' fans.



By the way, does anyone actually know who sits on the RFL disciplinary committee ?

The Wigan board?

2 ex-Wigan board members/ coaches.

Colin Clarke and Alan McInnes were two of this week's three man disciplinary committee (which presumably had responsibility for deciding on the Tomkins incident too). I don't know who the third member was, and the RFL haven't published the current rota, but it does mean two-thirds of the panel are ex-Wigan coaches, one of whom is Phil Clarke's dad.

It was Martin Aspinwall on Jon Wells, it was so high it struck him in the torso. I believe the initial response from the RFL was that there was a lack of evidence, unfortunately this just led to ridicule of the RFL when it was pointed out that the game was televised by Sky and the indcident was clearly captured on VCR's up and down the land, after that the RFL changed its mind and admitted it could now see what everyone else could, but there was no punishment (I think there may have been a letter about poor technique).



Sad thing is nobody at all is really surprised by how absurdly inconsistent the disciplinary system is, in some cases like the above it’s nothing short of bizarre. It seems that the RFL is reluctant to move to a more open and independent disciplinary system which would acknowledge all the blatant incidents that currently seem to fall down the back of the sofa when they review these things. But then a better system would almost certainly remove some of the discretionary power the RFL has over its competitions.