{"id":571230,"date":"2026-03-29T03:05:17","date_gmt":"2026-03-29T03:05:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/571230\/"},"modified":"2026-03-29T03:05:17","modified_gmt":"2026-03-29T03:05:17","slug":"panthers-kenny-banned-from-nrl-blockbuster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/571230\/","title":{"rendered":"Panthers’ Kenny banned from NRL blockbuster"},"content":{"rendered":"

Penrith hooker Mitch Kenny has received a one-game ban despite coach Ivan Cleary questioning whether his shot on Parramatta’s Isaiah Iongi was actually a hip-drop tackle.<\/p>\n

With an early guilty plea, Kenny will be banned from the Good Friday blockbuster against Melbourne in the first major setback for the Panthers on their unbeaten start to 2026.<\/p>\n

Kenny will miss an additional game against Canterbury in round six if he takes his case to the judiciary and loses.<\/p>\n

High-profile Bulldogs duo Lachlan Galvin and Viliame Kikau both went on report in Saturday’s loss to Newcastle but can accept fines for grade-one dangerous contact.<\/p>\n

\"Kikau\"<\/p>\n

Bulldogs powerhouse Viliame Kikau avoided a ban. (PR IMAGE PHOTO)<\/p>\n

Freddy Lussick is likely to start at hooker against the Storm in place of Kenny following an impressive first pre-season at the Panthers.<\/p>\n

Kenny went to the sin bin early in the second half of Penrith’s 48-20 defeat of Parramatta on Saturday for a shot that looks to have left former teammate Iongi with a syndesmosis injury.<\/p>\n

But after full-time, coach Cleary questioned whether Kenny’s shot was actually a textbook hip-drop tackle.<\/p>\n

“I feel for ‘Issy’…He’s a great kid and a great player and you never want to see anyone get injured,” Cleary said.<\/p>\n

“But I don’t think the hip-drop origin looked like that. It was a one-man tackle against a very fast, powerful player. At the time I actually thought, ‘what a great tackle’.”<\/p>\n

\"eels\"<\/p>\n

Isaiah Iongi receives attention following his injury. (Dan Himbrechts\/AAP PHOTOS)<\/p>\n

Cleary pointed out Kenny never left the ground in his tackle, often an indicator of a hip-drop tackle, and intimated that the league was too quick to make an example of players who caused injuries.<\/p>\n

“Ultimately it just feels like it’s going back to: if there’s a body, someone killed him,” Cleary said.<\/p>\n

“When the hip-drop (term) was first introduced, it was totally different to that.”<\/p>\n

The latest suspension comes after Kenny received a two-game ban for a hip-drop tackle on Sydney Roosters forward Nat Butcher early last season.<\/p>\n

Iongi became the second Eels player in as many games to suffer a serious injury in a hip-drop tackle after J’Maine Hopgood ruptured his anterior cruciate ligament against St George Illawarra in round three.<\/p>\n

o<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Penrith hooker Mitch Kenny has received a one-game ban despite coach Ivan Cleary questioning whether his shot on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":571231,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,188271,5098,4605,761,762,158,16390,85,5991,99327],"class_list":["post-571230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nrl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-isaiah-iongi","tag-ivan-cleary","tag-mitch-kenny","tag-national-rugby-league","tag-nationalrugbyleague","tag-nrl","tag-parramatta","tag-sports","tag-the-panthers","tag-viliame-kikau"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571230","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=571230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571230\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/571231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=571230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=571230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=571230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}