Paul Kent: Kevin Proctor didn’t deny biting Shaun Johnson until after the game
It wasn’t until after the match that Kevin Proctor dismissed the allegation he bit Shaun Johnson, writes Paul Kent. So if Proctor did not bite his New Zealand teammate, why didn’t he say so?
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The prosecution must ask a simple question which will help to simplify Bite Night at the judiciary this Tuesday.
If Kevin Proctor did not bite Shaun Johnson, why didn’t he say so?
Proctor’s denial has been given the amplifier since he left the dressing room after Saturday afternoon’s game.
In a touch of the dramatic, but great for headlines, Proctor has vowed to “fight to the death” to clear his name, which could take some time if the judiciary panel must make their arrival through Sydney traffic and take their seats in a particularly foul frame of mind.
Where does Proctor go if found guilty? And what does a fight to the death at League Central look like?
The message attempted to be made, and we know this because Proctor has stated it over and over again, is he did not bite Shaun Johnson.
On the field, though, was a different matter, which is what the judiciary must examine.
Proctor hits the ball up against Cronulla and Johnson wraps his arms around him in a tackle that never really has much to it at all, but then Johnson reels out of the tackle.
“He f…… bit me,” he says, as referee Henry Perenara calls, “Six more”.
Johnson runs back onside as a tackle is being affected, as they like to say, and as he runs past the Titans he is still talking, a complaint trying to find an ear.
“You’re a f…… dirty c…” he says to Proctor.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” says Perenara, who is either driving a plough horse or hears enough in Johnson’s Queen’s English to stop play.
“Shaun?” he asks, before turning to a Cronulla teammate. “Does he want to make an official complaint?”
“He f…ing bit me,” Johnson says.
“You’re a sook,” says Proctor. “You were choking me.”
Johnson is incredulous at the counter allegation and begins repeating Proctor’s accusations back to him.
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It continues in this vein for some time until, eventually, Perenara calms it down to tell Proctor, “We have vision from a bite so you’re off.”
“But he was choking,” Proctor says, protesting. “He is f…ing choking me. I tried to move …”
“You’re off, Kevin.”
Here it all takes a determined twist, though.
Johnson wanted nothing to do with his on-field allegation afterwards.
“Nothing happened,” he tells Yvonne Sampson after the game on Fox League.
“Let’s leave it at that.”
It is not unusual that players want to stick to the old code of “what happens on the field stays on the field”.
There is dressing room vision from after the game of Johnson describing to teammates how he was bitten even as there is dressing room vision of Proctor showing his teammates how he was being choked.
Bites sometimes happen in rugby league. Usually because fingers end up in places they shouldn’t, or perhaps an ear.
It is a little dog-eared now, but Ray Price was once famously accused of biting in a game when everyone who knew Price knew he always took his fronts out when he was getting dressed for the game.
It quickly circulated after Saturday’s game that Proctor was the first player in rugby league history to ever be sent off for biting but, in truth, he owns the honour on a technicality.
Mario Fenech was sent off for biting Benny Elias in a scrum in a 1986 minor semi-final.
Much like Johnson, Elias reeled from the scrum, a wounded deer, wailing,
“He bit me, he bit me.”
The referee needed only to look at the indentations on Elias’s hand to send Fenech off.
Alas, it was too good a fraud to let go uncelebrated and Elias later could not help himself, revealing he bit his own hand in a bid to get his great rival, Fenech, sent off.
So Proctor owns the record on a technicality.
So far overlooked, though, is that not until after the game does Proctor actually deny the allegation of biting.
On the field, his accusations could be regarded more as a defence of his actions than a denial.
He was being choked. You’re a sook.
Not, I didn’t bite you.
That was never raised until later, after the warm down in the dressing room.
There could be a simple explanation for this, that quite simply in the combative world of NRL Proctor passed right by the denial and went straight to the counter-attack, a common form of reaction in the retaliate first NRL.
Particularly given the vision clearly shows Proctor’s open mouth on Johnson’s arm but, at least on the angles already shown, contain no evidence of Proctor closing his mouth in a biting action.
Unless a new angle from what has already been shown is provided you would be taking six-to-four against a conviction.