{"id":531102,"date":"2026-03-10T13:23:25","date_gmt":"2026-03-10T13:23:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/531102\/"},"modified":"2026-03-10T13:23:25","modified_gmt":"2026-03-10T13:23:25","slug":"nrl-judiciary-make-call-on-braidon-burns-challenge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/531102\/","title":{"rendered":"NRL judiciary make call on Braidon Burns challenge"},"content":{"rendered":"

North Queensland Cowboys<\/a> winger Braidon Burns<\/a> will be free to play this weekend after having his careless high tackle charge downgraded at the NRL<\/a> judiciary.<\/p>\n

Burns, playing in the Las Vegas season opener against the Newcastle Knights<\/a>, was penalised and sin binned for a high shot on Kalyn Ponga<\/a> where he was deemed to have made direct shoulder to head contact.<\/p>\n

The NRL’s match review committee backed up that version of events the following day with their charge sheet detailing a Grade 2 charge against Burns.<\/p>\n

Given it was a second offence on his record, he was facing a two-match suspension with an early guilty plea, or three matches if he fought at judiciary.<\/p>\n

While pleading guilty to a careless high tackle, Burns attended the judiciary on Tuesday evening in the hope of downgrading the charge to a Grade 1 offence – which only carries a sanction of $1800 – and was successful.<\/p>\n

Burns’ challenge at the judiciary comes just weeks after Nathan Cleary<\/a> was successful in a similar high shot being downgrade while being represented by father and head coach Ivan Cleary<\/a>, and is set to a backdrop of plenty of controversy surrounding high tackles in the early part of the season.<\/p>\n

That comes after Stephen Crichton<\/a> seemingly got away with one in Las Vegas, while J’maine Hopgood<\/a> is facing a suspension for one of his own which looked more like a head clash out of the first game of the year on Australian soil between the Parramatta Eels<\/a> and Melbourne Storm<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Burns was named on Tuesday afternoon to play the Wests Tigers<\/a> on Saturday, and will now be free to take his spot with 20th man Robert Derby<\/a> remaining in the squad, but unlikely to be called upon.<\/p>\n

Get set for the footy with the FREE Zero Tackle 2026 NRL Season Guide!<\/a> Packed with 130+ pages of player profiles, team previews, insights and analysis, the 2026 NRL Season Guide<\/a> is built for fans who want the full picture. Download your free Season Guide HERE.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"North Queensland Cowboys winger Braidon Burns will be free to play this weekend after having his careless high…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":531103,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-531102","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\/531102","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=531102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531102\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/531103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=531102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=531102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=531102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}