The New Zealand Warriors are set to be missing more forwards in the coming weeks after the match review committee handed out penalties from Saturday's narrow win over the Cronulla Sharks.
While the Warriors have been fighting through a storm of player unavailabilities, both Matt Lodge and Kane Evans were charged from yesterday's contest. Dallin Watene-Zelezniak was also charged by the match review committee.
Things could have been a whole lot worse for Evans, who was reported three times and sin binned twice in the match.
He has been fined for two of the incidents, but has been handed a one-match suspension with an early guilty plea for the striking offence when he landed two punches on the chin of Sharks' centre Will Chambers.
The penalty for Evans would rise to two matches should he fight and lose at the judicary.
Lodge having only returned for the game against Cronulla after sitting out the previous clash with the Wests Tigers (when the Warriors couldn't even name 21 players) after being suspended. He was charged with a careless high tackle in the 11th minute of yesterday's game and with prior similar offences, is looking at two weeks on the sideline.
The penalty won't change regardless of whether he opts to fight at the judiciary.
Watene-Zelezniak has, like Evans, been charged with contrary conduct. He is looking at a week on the sidelines for the offence, but could fight at the judiciary without the penalty rising.
While Addin Fonua-Blake returned yesterday for the Warriors, the situation is dire in their forwards, with Tohu Harris and Wayde Egan among those players out for the remainder of the season.
Euan Aitken has been dragged into the second row in the last fortnight, and having both Lodge and Evans out will likely see the side need to turn to options like Pride Patterson-Robati, who was named in the reserves list a week ago.
