{"id":909347,"date":"2026-09-29T04:00:22","date_gmt":"2026-09-29T04:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/909347\/"},"modified":"2026-09-29T04:00:22","modified_gmt":"2026-09-29T04:00:22","slug":"phoenix-crossland-set-to-miss-nrl-grand-final-after-pleading-guilty-over-nathan-cleary-tackle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/909347\/","title":{"rendered":"Phoenix Crossland set to miss NRL grand final after pleading guilty over Nathan Cleary tackle"},"content":{"rendered":"

Newcastle Knights hooker Phoenix Crossland will plead guilty at the judiciary over the tackle that left Nathan Cleary with a compound fracture.<\/p>\n

Crossland was sent off for the hip-drop tackle in the 36th minute of Newcastle’s preliminary final win over Penrith on Sunday<\/a> and the match review committee sent him straight to the judiciary with a dangerous contact charge.<\/p>\n

A hearing is set for 6pm AEST tonight to decide the punishment, with Crossland’s plea all but guaranteeing he will miss Sunday’s grand final, barring an 11th-hour miracle.<\/p>\n

NRL final swings on Cleary’s horror injury<\/a><\/p>\n

Penrith and Newcastle were going hammer and tongs when Nathan Cleary’s horror ankle injury turned the NRL preliminary final on its head.<\/p>\n

Dragons forward Ryan Couchman was referred straight to the judiciary in round three for a hip drop that ended the season of Parramatta’s J’Maine Hopgood.<\/p>\n

Couchman pleaded guilty and was suspended for four games after being sin-binned for the tackle that left Hopgood with a torn ACL.<\/p>\n

“Whilst the panel accepted that this did not incorporate any element of intention or recklessness, it took the view that the player’s level of culpability was significant, a factor reflected in the serious injury sustained by the ball carrier,” judiciary chair Geoff Bellew said during a 90-minute hearing.<\/p>\n

Crossland has apologised to Cleary, who urged people to stop abusing the Knights number nine online<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“It was a complete accident, and he doesn’t deserve the unwarranted hate. He reached out to apologise, and I have nothing but respect for him,” Cleary posted on social media after surgery on his broken left leg.<\/p>\n

\"Phoenix<\/p>\n

Phoenix Crossland was sent off as Nathan Cleary left on a medicab. (Getty Images: Cameron Spencer)<\/p>\n

“He’s a competitor, and our game is made up of split-second moments that sometimes lead to unfortunate circumstances.<\/p>\n

“Comments like this are so unfair. Spread love, not hate.”<\/p>\n

Newcastle football director Chris James on Monday described it as “a horrible accident at speed under fatigue”.<\/p>\n

“Phoenix Crossland has made more tackles in the NRL than any other player and he got one wrong,” he told ABC Sport.<\/p>\n

“He got one wrong and it was a horrible injury for Nathan, but that’s not Phoenix’s go. If you’ve ever met Phoenix Crossland, he’s one of the great men of rugby league.<\/p>\n

“Horrible for Nathan, the thoughts of our club go out to Nathan.<\/p>\n

“He’ll go down as one of the greats of the game and we hope he has a speedy recovery, but we’ll also wrap our arms around Phoenix and make sure we look after him this week too.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Newcastle Knights hooker Phoenix Crossland will plead guilty at the judiciary over the tackle that left Nathan Cleary…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":909348,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,139452,11288,77424,25994,1203,761,762,158,421891,159,85],"class_list":["post-909347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nrl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-broken-leg","tag-grand-final","tag-hip-drop","tag-judiciary","tag-nathan-cleary","tag-national-rugby-league","tag-nationalrugbyleague","tag-nrl","tag-phoenix-crossland","tag-rugby-league","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/909347","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=909347"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/909347\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/909348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=909347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=909347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=909347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}