Cody Walker suspended by NRL for two matches over fight video

The NRL have punished South Sydney star Cody Walker, after video footage emerged showing the five-eighth allegedly kicking a man in the chest, while the Rabbitohs have also come under fire for the cover-up.

• Cody Walker cleared by police as player agent under investigation
• Wayne Bennett’s under fire over Cody Walker fight video

Rightly or wrongly, Wayne Bennett won’t go changing at this late stage of his career.

So don’t expect the NRL’s longest serving coach to make any public or private apologies for his decision not to report Cody Walker to the NRL integrity unit.

South Sydney’s star playmaker has been rubbed out of next Friday’s blockbuster return clash against the Sydney Roosters after copping a two-match suspension for his ‘karate-kick’ involvement in a street fight in his hometown of Casino last December that followed a family funeral.

Walker has also been issued with a $15,000 suspended fine.

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Cody Walker has been suspended for two weeks by the NRL.

Meanwhile, the NRL also fined South Sydney $20,000 for not reporting the incident to the NRL immediately, although Bennett escaped an individual sanction.

While Souths have five business days to respond to the breach notice, it all but guarantees Walker will miss the next two matches against the Roosters and Melbourne.

It’s a huge blow for the Bunnies who will most likely call up unheralded rookie and former Australian Schoolboy Troy Dargan into the crucial playmaking role to make his NRL debut.

Dargan, 22, is a Parramatta junior who also had a stint at the Brisbane Broncos before joining Souths this season.

Walker has previously said he would accept any punishment, so it would be unlikely he contests the decision.

Some have gone as far as to label Walker’s actions ‘a dog shot’, saying he had no right to be even involved in the fight given that it was a dispute between two other men when he unsuspectingly kicked a man.

But while footage did not surface on social media until this week after it became the centre of an alleged blackmail attempt, Bennett had previously seen it as far back as January when Walker first approached him about it.

Bennett has been widely slammed for not reporting the incident immediately to his club or the NRL.

Wayne Bennett has come under fire for not reporting the incident to the NRL Integrity Unit. Picture: AAP.

The NRL integrity unit has clear guidelines about a club and coach’s responsibilities to report anything that may damage the game’s integrity or image.

But Bennett believes his actions have been justified by the decision of the NSW Police this week not to charge Walker after they also viewed the footage.

It is understood Bennett told the integrity unit in his interview on Tuesday that at no stage did he set out to embarrass the game or cover up anything.

Rather, his intentions were to assist a player who came to his coach for help.

Bennett also believes that given there had not been a complaint to the club or the police, then or since, Walker’s actions had not brought the game into disrepute.

In hindsight he got it wrong because the video did come out and the game’s image was affected.

But the fact remains that only happened after Walker’s manager was contacted last Saturday night asking for an alleged $20,000 not to release the footage to the media.

At that point Bennett and Souths wasted no time informing the NRL and the police.

People will argue that Bennett has been around long enough to understand his actions went against NRL policy, but he has a very different view on how a player-coach relationship works.

NRL South Sydney Rabbitohs player Cody Walker training at Redfern Oval. Photo: Tim Pascoe

It is understood Walker was not only embarrassed by the fallout but previously had shown genuine remorse for his actions, conceding that alcohol didn’t always bring the best out in him.

That is something he is working on, but Bennett does not want it to become another public discussion point about an individual’s challenges in life, just to try and win some public support.

After 45 years as a top level coach, Bennett has seen it all.

And for all the drama this has caused this past week, he maintains it won’t be one that keeps him awake at night.

Originally published as Cody Walker suspended by NRL for two matches over fight video