‘We’ve got an obligation to try to help players’: NRL’s warning to players as Val Holmes heads to the judiciary

It’s going to be a long night at the NRL judiciary, with the Cowboys confirming they will seek a downgrade for Valentine Holmes, but it’s a big gamble with the rep star set to miss the rest of the regular season if he’s unsuccessful.

Holmes was hit with a grade 2 careless high tackle charge for an incident on Sunday when he jammed in and caught Gold Coast’s Jayden Campbell high.

The North Queensland star was sent to the sin bin for the second week in a row after he was marched for 10 minutes for a polarising tackle on Mitch Moses that avoided a ban but led to a fine.

Holmes would have been suspended for three matches if he’d taken the early guilty plea but will be available to face the Broncos on Saturday if he gets it reduced to a grade 1 charge.

If he loses, then he’ll miss the rest of the regular season in what would be a huge blow for North Queensland’s top-eight hopes.

The NRL sent out a memo to all 17 clubs last week reminding them of an email sent back in April that warned outside backs that there was an increasing number of players being charged for high contact when jamming in on ball carriers.

NRL head of football Graham Annesley was asked for his views on the tackle given it was the same player involved two weeks in a row, and while he couldn’t talk about that tackle specifically, he explained why the NRL was working so hard to minimise high contact.

“I can’t talk about that incident, but the NRL has taken a number of steps this year to try to inform and educate clubs about what’s acceptable and what’s not acceptable,” he said on Monday.

“We can’t do any more than that.

“We can’t be on the field. Referees can’t change what takes place on the field, they can only respond to what takes place on the field, and the NRL is the same.

“We can put the rules in place and we can issue guidelines and send out information to clubs for their own benefit – and I’m talking generally here – whether incidents are found to have breached the rules or not is a completely different matter.

“We’re doing what we can to try and be proactive, not just with high tackles but with hip drops and with a whole range of things that we’ve talked about in the past.

“We never really used to do this. The administration of the game would just respond. If players broke the rules, then they’d just finish up in front of the judiciary and they would receive penalties for it.

“We think we’ve got an obligation to try to help players, and that’s what we’re trying to do because no one wants to see players in trouble.

“No one wants to see our players off the field, whether that’s for sin bins, for send-offs or whether it’s for them being suspended.

“We want to see all of the players in the competition be available to play, but we also don’t want to see players unavailable because they’re injured.”

Dragons veteran Jack de Belin will also front the judiciary in a bid to avoid a lengthy ban for a hip-drop tackle on Manly’s Christian Tuipulotu.