Waerea-Hargreaves escapes NRL ban
THE Sydney Roosters have received a huge boost with Jared Waerea-Hargreaves cleared of a careless high tackle at the NRL judiciary, which was deemed nothing more than a “rugby league accident”.
If South Sydney were seething about losing Sam Burgess because of a hair pull, they would not have been impressed when news filtered out of League HQ on Tuesday night that the Sydney Roosters prop had been freed to take his place against them on Friday night.
Judiciary panel members Dallas Johnson, Tony Puletua and Mal Cochrane took just 15 minutes to find Waerea-Hargreaves not guilty.
“I’m super relieved, we felt we had a really good case and I’d like to thank our solicitor James McLeod, he was amazing and I’m really happy with the result,” Waerea-Hargreaves said. “I’m looking forward to prepping as much as I can and getting on to Friday against the Bunnies.”
Waerea-Hargreaves embraced McLeod after the hearing and appeared to accidentally collect him with his bicep.
The Kiwi enforcer landed in hot water for his 74th-minute shot on Souths star Liam Knight last Thursday, which was made worse when Knight clashed heads with Lindsay Collins in the same tackle and was later taken from the field on the back of a medicab.
Waerea-Hargreaves at one stage stood up in the hearing and tried to demonstrate what a “catching tackle” was.
He had hoped Knight fell into his chest and did his best to minimise the impact by lifting his right leg rather than continuing the tackle and driving forward.
“He fell into my bicep,” WaereaHargreaves said.
He also stressed he had turned his head at the last moment when “clipped on the chin” by Knight’s accidental “swinging arm”.
“In the heat of the battle I remember it wasn’t until I saw the footage and realised why I reacted the way I did,” Waerea-Hargreaves said. “The main reason I reacted the way I did was I flinched [because] of the swinging arm.”
Waerea-Hargreaves added he had to “fill the space” because his returning skipper Boyd Cordner had missed Knight earlier in the play.
McLeod said Waerea-Hargreaves had made “low-impact contact” and posed the question when winding up his defence: “What more could he have reasonably done in the circumstances? What other steps could he have done realistically in the time he had?”
It was Waerea-Hargreaves’ third trip to the NRL judiciary in 2019.
The Roosters forward was found guilty of a grade one dangerous contact charge in June after connecting with the head of Newcastle star Kalyn Ponga on May 24.
A three-man judicial panel took 35 minutes to find him guilty after a near-two hour hearing.
A week after his return from that suspension, Waerea-Hargreaes faced another dangerous contact charge after clashing heads with North Queensland Cowboys forward Josh McGuire.