Get your first month for just $1. Limited-time offer<\/a>.<\/p>\nWighton could have accepted a three-match ban for the grade two charge that saw him sent to the sin bin for a tackle that knocked out Cronulla\u2019s Toby Rudolf on Saturday night but rolled the dice after he pleaded not guilty.<\/p>\n
The panel of Greg McCallum and Bob Lindner listened to the 75-minute hearing and deliberated for just 15 minutes before they unanimously found him guilty.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a fair hearing,\u201d Wighton said afterwards.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe came here thinking we had a good case. We didn\u2019t get the result we wanted.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll turn my attention to preparing my teammates and really helping everyone at my club the best way I can.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was a reunion of sorts between Wighton and judiciary counsel Patrick Knowles, with the five-eighth asking him \u201chow many games of rugby league have you played?\u201d during a fiery hearing in 2023 when he was banned for three matches for biting.<\/p>\n
Wighton didn\u2019t give evidence on this occasion, a point not lost on Knowles who suggested he could have explained why there were no other options available to him to make a different type of tackle. <\/p>\n
However, judiciary chairman Geoff Bellew reminded the panel that Wighton had no obligation to justify.<\/p>\n
Knowles described the contact as a \u201ctextbook example of a shoulder charge\u201d and that he twisted his body, the right shoulder led the forceful contact and that his left arm raised in a bracing motion but didn\u2019t attempt to wrap.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe amount of force generated in a tackle that used no arms carries a significant risk of injury,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe shoulder was the first impact and carried the primary degree of force.\u201d<\/p>\n
Prominent Sydney lawyer Nick Ghabar represented Wighton and argued it was \u201cquite wrong\u201d to suggest he propped and drove with the shoulder and that he did his best to avoid a head on collision. <\/p>\n
Ghabar argued that the right arm wrapped around Rudolf\u2019s left arm before contact and that the Cronulla forward generated the force by leading with his head and arms. <\/p>\n
\u201cRudolf stepped \u2018violently\u2019 off his left foot,\u201d he said, arguing that it was inevitable that there\u2019d be a more violent collision if Wighton hadn\u2019t dipped his body.<\/p>\n
\u201cWighton drops his body height to avoid the risk of a head clash. He\u2019s got a split second decision to make. He\u2019s attempting to tackle with his left arm but his right arm doesn\u2019t have the ability to swing around the back of Rudolf.\u201d<\/p>\n
The referee\u2019s report from Belinda Sharpe included a quote from Wighton that said \u201cI couldn\u2019t get my arm out\u201d, while the medical report said the injury was caused by a \u201chead clash from opponent\u201d.<\/p>\n
Ghabar suggested that the first contact was shoulder on shoulder, but that played into the argument it was an actual shoulder charge.<\/p>\n
Knowles refuted a number of those arguments and pointed out Wighton\u2019s right fist was clenched so it couldn\u2019t have been a conventional wrapping tackle and that he could\u2019ve twisted the other way and made a conventional left shoulder tackle. <\/p>\n
Ghabar sought a downgrade that would have seen Wighton miss two matches, but it was dismissed after Knowles argued the force was moderate, it was careless and the risk of injury was moderate and that the risk came to fruition.<\/p>\n
Wighton will miss matches against the Broncos, Titans, Eels and Dragons and will return in the final round against the Roosters, with Lewis Dodd likely to start in the halves. <\/p>\n
Originally published as Wighton cops four-game ban in a huge blow for the Rabbitohs<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wayne Bennett\u2019s hopes of avoiding his first wooden spoon have taken a massive hit with veteran playmaker Jack…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":30316,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,689,28400,28402,763,24011,4578,28401,761,762,673,158,677,27148,23858,8088,85,23994,27290,27162,1651],"class_list":["post-30315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nrl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australia-and-new-zealand","tag-crippling-injury-toll","tag-four-game-ban","tag-fox-league","tag-gosford","tag-jack-wighton","tag-judiciary-verdict","tag-national-rugby-league","tag-nationalrugbyleague","tag-new-south-wales","tag-nrl","tag-oceania","tag-reserves-wrap","tag-shoulder-charge","tag-sin-bin","tag-sports","tag-toby-rudolph","tag-turns-back","tag-warriors-statement","tag-wayne-bennett"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30315"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30315\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}