With their season on life support, Wests Tigers are going for broke and will fight the suspension handed to young playmaker Latu Fainu.<\/p>\n
The Tigers were set to be without Fainu for Saturday’s trip to Canberra but have opted to contest the charge handed to the 21-year-old that stemmed from their miserable loss to Canterbury.<\/p>\n
Fainu has pleaded not guilty and will escape suspension if he convinces the panel to strike out a two-match ban for his tackle on Leo Thompson.<\/p>\n
The Tongan international executed a low tackle on the Bulldogs front-rower with Thompson flying head over heels.<\/p>\n
Fainu was fiercely defended by Nine Network analyst Andrew Johns.<\/p>\n
“He’s done nothing wrong … you can’t take accidents out of the game,” Johns said on the Sunday Footy Show.<\/p>\n
“You can’t tackle high in case you chin them, but you can’t go below the knees now, so where are you supposed to hit them? <\/p>\n
“Not even a penalty for mine, you can’t take the accidents out of the game.”<\/p>\n
Fainu was sinbinned at the time and will have another match slapped onto his ban if he is unsuccessful at the judiciary.<\/p>\n
If Fainu is suspended, Tigers coach Benji Marshall may opt to hand talented five-eighth Javon Andrews an NRL debut.<\/p>\n
Andrews, 19, has been a revelation in NSW Cup this season with 19 try assists and five tries for Western Suburbs.<\/p>\n
Elsewhere, South Sydney back-rower David Fifita will also contest a grade two dangerous contact charge on Tuesday, following the Rabbitohs’ loss to Canberra on the weekend.<\/p>\n
Australian Associated Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With their season on life support, Wests Tigers are going for broke and will fight the suspension handed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":811919,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,386858,761,762,158,85,386857,4515],"class_list":["post-811918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nrl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-latu-fainu","tag-national-rugby-league","tag-nationalrugbyleague","tag-nrl","tag-sports","tag-tongan-rugby-league-players","tag-wests-tigers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/811918","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=811918"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/811918\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/811919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=811918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=811918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=811918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}