The legendary player in the NRL was shocked by Junior Pauga’s sentence.
Former NRL player Andrew Johns has criticized Junior Pauga of the Roosters for receiving an excessively light punishment after he was sent off for a high tackle on Saturday night. The Roosters trounced the Bulldogs 26-8 in the pouring rain, putting on one of their best 80-minute performances of the NRL season thus far.
However, the ending of the clash took a twist when Pauga was sent straight off the field for rushing out of the defensive line and smashing Connor Tracey in the head with a swinging arm. “That’s direct contact to the head, and he’s going to leave the field here, that’s a swinging arm … that’s a bad one,” Michael Ennis said on Fox Sports commentary.
The Roosters were forced to play with just 11 players for several sets as a result of Sam Walker’s 10-minute suspension for a professional foul, but they were still able to prevent the Bulldogs from scoring during that time. The Roosters prevailed, but Pauga was told he would miss four weeks due to the risky tackle he made on Tracey.
However, NRL greats Johns and Brad Fittler have both agreed Pauga should be spending more time on the sideline having claimed it was one of the more dangerous tackles seen on the field in 2024. “Four weeks? A million per cent (it should have been more),” Johns said on Channel Nine’s the Sunday Footy Show. “That was a stiff arm, an old-fashioned coat hanger. It’s hard to watch.”
Johns alluded to a tactic this year, which has seen wingers and centres jam in to make an early tackle, that has backfired on a number of occasions and is becoming increasingly dangerous. “When they jam from outside-in the centres and wingers to put pressure on, you’ve got to get it right,” Johns said.
“We’ve seen Maika Sivo pinged a few times, obviously we saw (Joseph) Sua’ali’i in Origin … but this one is awful,” Johns added. Fittler agreed and claimed four weeks appeared light for the swinging-arm tackle.
“I can’t see where they got the four weeks,” he added. “I’ve watched Junior this year, he has had an incredible season, but I reckon he slips just before he takes off to chase. I haven’t seen anything like this in his game but four weeks …,” he said.
Queensland great Sam Thaiday agreed Pauga got the tackle all wrong. “He got everything wrong in this,” Thaiday said. “It’s a very lazy effort and attempt at making a tackle. He deserved a send off and I think four weeks is pretty light for that type of tackle.”
