{"id":46665,"date":"2025-08-06T01:33:05","date_gmt":"2025-08-06T01:33:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/46665\/"},"modified":"2025-08-06T01:33:05","modified_gmt":"2025-08-06T01:33:05","slug":"nrl-warns-wests-tigers-over-khawd-gesture-fines-brent-naden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/46665\/","title":{"rendered":"NRL warns Wests Tigers over ‘khawd’ gesture, fines Brent Naden"},"content":{"rendered":"

The NRL<\/a> has issued Brent Naden with a breach notice over his social-media post taunting Canterbury, but opted against fining Wests Tigers<\/a> players for their on-field “khawd”.<\/p>\n

Three days after the Tigers’ emotion-fuelled win over the Bulldogs<\/a>, the NRL issued a trio of players a formal warning on Wednesday morning.<\/p>\n

But the league opted against sanctioning the group, with confusion still reigning over the true meaning of the gesture made at Bulldogs supporters on Sunday.<\/p>\n

The “khawd” is known as an equivalent to “flipping the bird” in the Arabic community, with Naden and brothers Samuela and Latu Fainu among the players involved.<\/p>\n

Debate raged since Monday over the offensiveness of the gesture, with NRL CEO Andrew Abdo admitting on Tuesday he also had to “learn up” on the matter.<\/p>\n

“The NRL has today issued Wests Tigers with a formal warning that relates to the on-field conduct of three Players on 3 August 2025, during round 22,” the NRL said in a statement.<\/p>\n

“The NRL acknowledges that these actions caused, or had the potential to cause, offence to members of the NRL community.”<\/p>\n

Naden, though, is facing a fine from the NRL over a social media video that went viral on Sunday night.<\/p>\n

Brent Naden [R] has been issued with a breach notice while Wests Tigers have received a formal warning over the ‘khawd’ gesture\u00a0Mark Evans\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

The former Canterbury centre appeared to film himself making the gesture and yelling “f—ing Dogs” to the camera.<\/p>\n

“The notice alleges that Naden’s conduct following the Wests Tigers match on 3 August 2025 contravened the NRL Code of Conduct,” the NRL said.<\/p>\n

“The player will have five days to respond to the breach notice.”<\/p>\n

The NRL’s current policy means sanctions are not announced when a breach notice is handed down, but Naden is expected to face a fine over the incident.<\/p>\n

Matt Lodge copped a $5000 sanction for sticking up his middle finger at the crowd in the final round of 2021, while playing for the Warriors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The NRL has issued Brent Naden with a breach notice over his social-media post taunting Canterbury, but opted…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":46666,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-46665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nrl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-national-rugby-league","tag-nationalrugbyleague","tag-nrl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46665","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=46665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46665\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}