South Sydney Rabbitohs coach Jason Demetriou may have walked away from a fiery encounter with the Sydney Roosters with the win, but after a spiteful game that resulted in a record seven sin-bins, heโs called for a crackdown on a particular type of dangerous act.
The calls came following a second-half encounter between props Jared Waerea-Hargreaves and Tom Burgess, where the Rooster appeared to slam Burgessโ head into the ground. The English international went on to become one of three players ruled out of the contest after failing to pass an HIA.
โI think itโs an ordinary act,โ Demetriou said after the game.
โThe game has got to come down on it.
โYou know what youโre doing when you slam a blokeโs head into the ground and as a player youโve got to have some respect for the opposition. If you donโt, then who are you?
โItโs not just the Roosters, itโs happening across the board too often. The deliberate ones, weโve got to come down on them.
โTomโs a big man, but everyone saw how bad he came out of the tackle.โ
The game itself was chaotic and stop-start, punctuated by the record number of sin-bins dished out by referee Ashley Klein as tempers regularly flared and some genuine spite was added to the contest.
Demetriou pointed to the emotion of the moment as a cause for regular stoppages and discipline as he awaits Mondayโs judiciary charges.
โI think emotion got the better of both teams at times,โ he said.
โItโs concerning (that players could be suspended), but to be honest, I donโt think (the incidents in question) were that bad. Weโll wait and see, and whatever it is, weโll deal with it.
The Rabbitohs broke another record on the day as well, with winger and try-scoring machine Alex Johnston becoming the first player in premiership history to score 30 tries in consecutive seasons.
