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<\/a><\/p>\nUnder changes announced on Thursday morning, former NSW Supreme Court justice Geoffrey Bellew will take on the new role of independent decision maker.<\/p>\n
In doing so, Bellew will determine penalties for most off-field matters, with the exception of doping and drug-testing breaches as well vilification cases.<\/p>\n
Ashley Feder\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
The integrity unit will continue to exist, still charged with investigating off-field matters in the same way it already does.<\/p>\n
But instead of the NRL handing down punishments, Bellew will be the person responsible for determining if sanctions are required and what they are.<\/p>\n
NRL CEO Andrew Abdo will also retain the right to make recommendations to Bellew, and will also determine whether a player is stood down under the no-fault policy.<\/p>\n
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Players and clubs will also still hold the right to respond to breach notices before sanctions are made, while they or Abdo can appeal any decision made by Bellew.<\/p>\n
Bellew’s appointment continues to make him one of the most powerful figures in rugby league, given he is already the chair of the NRL judiciary.<\/p>\n
The new process follows extensive talks with both the clubs and players’ union.<\/p>\n
It also marks the biggest change to the policing of off-field behaviour since the introduction of the NRL’s integrity unit in 2013.<\/p>\n
The NRL is also yet to appoint a new head of the integrity unit, since Jason King’s move to become Manly CEO at the start of this year.<\/p>\n
It is not believed Bellew’s appointment will change the need for a new integrity unit boss to be appointed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The NRL has overhauled its integrity unit, with an independent figure to determine off-field punishments for the first…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":97839,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-489270","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\/489270","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=489270"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489270\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97839"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=489270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=489270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=489270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}