Kristian Woolf was dumbfounded why two of his players were sin-binned after responding to a heated confrontation forged by two Roosters players, while Trent Robinson felt nothing happened to warrant four sin bins.
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Sin bin Saturday marred the first half of the Roosters’ 64-12 thrashing of the Dolphins after Spencer Leniu sparked an all-in melee following Mark Nawaqanitawase second try.
Leniu and Naufahu Whyte were sent to the sin bin for instigating the incident, but Dolphins’ stars Francis Molo and Aublix Tawha were also sent for spell for retaliating.
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However, Woolf was flabbergasted what referee Gerard Sutton expected his players to do after Leniu’s behaviour.
“I just don’t understand the sin-binnings to be honest with you,” Woolf said.
“A couple of minutes before that we had a very slightly high tackle and blokes run in everywhere to get a penalty.
“I don’t get how we’re allowed to do that. And the opposition score, two of their players come over with pushing, we’re standing in the dead ball area, two guys come over pushing and shoving and shaping up.
“I don’t know what our blokes are supposed to do, so I just can’t understand those sin-binnings at all.”
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Woolf wasn’t making excuses for his side’s horror performance, but maintained the sin-binnings didn’t make sense.
“Do we have to allow ourselves to get punched to not get sin-binned?” Woolf said.
“And there’s a man standing in front of you with his hands up shaping up. I don’t know what our boys are supposed to do.
“And that’s not why we lost the game. You know, we need to be a lot better than that, but I just don’t understand that situation.”
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Dolphin skipper Isaiya Katoa agreed with his coach and defended his players for standing their ground and sticking up for themselves.
“I think we got the warning before and obviously didn’t want players running in and it’s just the whole emotion of that carried on into the next set,” Katoa said.
“And then I’m a little bit similar to Woolfy there. They’ve just scored and they’re coming past and giving our boys a mouthful.
“And then I just don’t see what our boys are meant to do, they are not going to stand there and just cop it.
“And when someone’s being like that, you’ve got to stand up for yourself, we’re not going to let other teams stand over us and that’s something that we pride ourselves on.”
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Roosters coach Robinson believes it was harsh to send four players to the sin bin when nothing really happened and felt one from each side might have been sufficient.
“There was obviously the incident just before that happened and then as soon as they put a warning out, you knew that it was all a fair bit of hot air after the try,” Robinson said.
“Not much happened. It was just a bit of push and shove. But the warning 30 seconds before, probably, I think obviously that pushed him into sending, but four off was a lot.
“It seemed like possibly one from each side would have been enough because nothing really happened.
“But anyway, it was Warren Ryan’s 11 vs 11, so we got to see 10 minutes of that and see how it went.”
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