Melbourne Storm forward Trent Loiero has escaped a suspension despite being charged over a ‘cannonball tackle’ on Saturday night.
The last thing the Storm needed was another body on the sidelines, after losing a trio of players to injury during their come from behind win over the Wests Tigers.
Loiero has been fined $1000 after being hit with a grade one dangerous contact charge for the incident, which left Tigers backrower Luciano Leilua hobbling around. Thankfully, he escaped serious injury.
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Remarkably, it is the only incident referred to the MRC from the opening six games of the NRL men’s season so far.
The ‘cannonball’ has crept back into the game recently, after a crackdown on the style of tackle in the mid-2010s.
A cannonball is when a defender launches themselves at the legs of the ball runner while they are being held upright by other tacklers – of course, both coaches had opposing opinions of the incident.
“I didn’t see it closely, but I thought he was still moving,” Storm boss Craig Bellamy said post-game.
“If they’re standing up and they’re not moving, you can’t go in and do that, I thought he was still moving – I might be wrong, I might be proven wrong there.”
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His Tigers counterpart Michael Maguire was reluctant to speak on the incident, but said that he was concerned cannonballs were making a comeback.
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“It’s something that the game needs to watch. It’s pretty dangerous, and it’s a bad tackle if it’s done on someone,” he said.
“You can see there that (Leilua) was hobbling around for a fair while, but I’ll let the game sort that out.”
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