{"id":164883,"date":"2025-09-28T00:28:12","date_gmt":"2025-09-28T00:28:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/164883\/"},"modified":"2025-09-28T00:28:12","modified_gmt":"2025-09-28T00:28:12","slug":"wakefield-trinity-boss-slams-ridiculous-policing-of-18th-man-as-player-welfare-questions-asked","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/164883\/","title":{"rendered":"Wakefield Trinity boss slams ‘ridiculous’ policing of 18th man as player welfare questions asked"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Wakefield Trinity head coach Daryl Powell<\/a> has called for changes in the rules around the usage of the 18th man, slamming the decision for it not to be activated after Seth Nikotemo was unable to return against Leigh Leopards as \u2018nonsense\u2019.<\/p>\n

Nikotemo was dumped on his shoulder by Leigh\u2019s Lachlan Lam just before half time with the second-row unable to feature in the second stanza and whilst Lam was penalised, Wakefield were not able to activate their 18th man.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s something that Daryl Powell claimed wouldn\u2019t have allowed his side to win with the Trinity coach very complimentary of Leigh for their 26-10 win<\/a>, however, Powell took aim at the rules and how they are policed.<\/p>\n

Admitting that his side were down on troops after Matty Storton\u2019s early knee injury and the shoulder knock to Nikotemo, Powell argued: \u201cI felt that we should have been able to use our 18th man when Seth gets dumped on his shoulder there.<\/p>\n

\u201cAllegedly, you can\u2019t do that which I think is wrong because it (was) foul play so it doesn\u2019t make sense to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Daryl Powell hits out at \u2018nonsense\u2019 18th man rule following Wakefield Trinity defeat<\/p>\n

The rules around an 18th man being activated say that they can be activated if a team suffer two failed HIAs or if a player sustains a serious match-ending injury within a foul and the player who committed the foul is either sin-binned or sent off.<\/p>\n

Because Liam Moore took no further action other than just awarding a penalty, the conditions for 18th man Mathieu Cozza to be activated were not met and Powel took issue with that.<\/p>\n

Speaking post-match<\/a>, he said: \u201cYou shouldn\u2019t have to be put in the bin (for the 18th man to activate), if someone has got injured and it\u2019s foul play. That was nonsense which is something we have to see a fair bit with the rules at times.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat hurt us because we had two blokes sat on their backsides, one through foul play but we couldn\u2019t do anything about it. We might as well have sent our 18th man on.\u201d<\/p>\n

The game itself was relatively free-flowing with that incident between Lam and Nikotemo being one of the only major stoppages in play in the first half and Powell queried why it\u2019s the case that play-off matches are officiated differently.<\/p>\n

He said: \u201cI asked the question, are we trying to go through the whole game without a penalty and that was both ways. You don\u2019t want to see a lot of penalties but sometimes when it gets to this time of year, you\u2019re letting some things go.\u201d<\/p>\n

Just three penalties were awarded all game which is in stark contrast to the side\u2019s most recent Super League meeting in Round 14 when 17 penalties were awarded.<\/p>\n

Concluding, Powell said: \u201cI thought we should have been able to use our 18th man. It\u2019s a ridiculous way of policing the law. Foul play is foul play, whether it\u2019s a sin bin or not.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think that we would have won the game anyway, using our 18th man wasn\u2019t going to help us win the game but we talk about player welfare and then we fight against it at times.\u201d<\/p>\n

Serious About Rugby League has launched a brand new podcast which can be watched in full on our\u00a0YouTube channel here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wakefield Trinity head coach Daryl Powell has called for changes in the rules around the usage of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":164884,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-164883","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-rugby","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164883"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164883\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/164884"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}