Monday Buzz: Felise Kaufusi’s shocking record highlights NRL failure on foul play

The NRL are clueless when it comes to player safety and welfare, after Felise Kaufusi avoids serious punishment for a shocking crusher tackle, writes PHIL ROTHFIELD.

Rugby league is the only sport on the planet where a face slap is considered a more serious offence than a grubby tackle that can potentially break an opponent’s neck.

Panthers fullback Dylan Edwards and Broncos prop Keenan Palasia were sin-binned for slapping each other on Friday night in the most pathetic overreaction by match officials and the bunker.

Two slaps, two sin bins. Seriously.

Just 24 hours later Melbourne Storm’s Felise Kaufusi, a repeat foul-play offender, does a shocking crusher tackle on Cronulla Sharks winger Ronaldo Mulitalo.

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Felise Kaufusi's hall of shame.

With the combined weight of Nelson Asofa-Solomona and Kaufusi, Mulitalo has 224kg of weight pressing into his vertebrae and spinal column with enormous force.

There’s a huge risk of a bone fracture or a ligament rupture.

Ask PJ Marsh, the former Parramatta Eels player. Ask Ethan Lowe.

Ask them how crusher tackles destroyed their careers.

In this latest incident, Kaufusi stays on the field. Then the NRL match review committee hands out a miserable $1000 fine to a bloke who earns $700,000 a year.

It’s a round of drinks.

Surely when these incidents are being reviewed, the player’s history and priors need to taken into consideration.

I wrote about Kaufusi last year and his foul play.

How he used his forearm to attack the head of Parramatta Eels forward Ryan Matterson, while he was on the ground, and knocked him out of the game for weeks with the after effects of shocking concussion.

How he struck Roosters skipper Boyd Cordner twice … at Suncorp and again in the opening State of Origin match at Adelaide Oval.

The modern day one on one 🤔

Palasia and Edwards are off to the sin bin after this...

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The first incident with a forearm to the head the second with an elbow to the chin. Both causing concussions.

The NRL has only themselves to blame.

Sometimes they are clueless.

They have given the bunker the power to forensically examine every little incident in the game.

They have launched yet another rules crackdown – this time over play-the-ball interference.

Who knows what’s next.

Yet Peter V’landys, Andrew Abdo and Wayne Pearce on the commission are ignoring the most important issues about player safety and welfare.

The only way to get rid of crusher tackles is by suspending players.

The $1000 fine is a disgrace and absolutely no deterrent to the next player who wants to put an opponent’s career at risk.

Originally published as Monday Buzz: Felise Kaufusi’s shocking record highlights NRL failure on foul play