The South Sydney Rabbitohs’ bid to secure a spot in the NRL finals has been hit by a devastating triple setback, just days out from their critical round clash against the Melbourne Storm. The biggest blow came Tuesday night, when experienced starting forward David Fifita saw his appeal against a dangerous contact charge dismissed by the NRL judiciary, resulting in a two-match suspension that rules him out of Friday’s high-stakes game. The roster crisis deepens with two more key back-row forwards already sidelined by injury: Tallis Duncan is out with a hamstring strain, while captain Cameron Murray will miss the encounter with a calf injury. Young forward Thomas Fletcher is now the leading candidate to step into Fifita’s starting edge position, leaving the Rabbitohs severely depleted in one of their most impactful position groups.
The charge against Fifita stems from an incident during the Rabbitohs’ recent clash with the Canberra Raiders, early in the second half. While tackling Raiders forward Hudson Young, Fifita made contact with the back of Young’s head with his foot. The contact was not penalized by on-field officials at the time, but the match review panel later issued a Grade 2 dangerous contact charge. Had Fifita accepted an early guilty plea, he would have received a one-match suspension. Instead, he entered a guilty plea but contested the grading, launching an appeal at Rugby League Central to reduce the charge’s severity.
Fifita’s legal team, led by experienced sports defense counsel Nick Ghabar, argued that the incident was not a deliberate dangerous action. Ghabar told the judiciary panel, made up of former NRL players Tony Puletua and Paul Simpkins, that Young had pushed himself upward off the tackle, which exaggerated the extent of the contact. He emphasized there was no deliberate, separate kicking movement: Fifita had no planted foot to generate a conventional kicking action, no intentional movement to strike Young, and no follow-through after the contact, he claimed. Ghabar also noted that both the on-field referee and touch judge had an unobstructed view of the incident and chose not to issue a penalty, and drew a comparison to a 2024 Grade 1 charge involving St George Illawarra Dragons winger Tyrell Sloan, who kicked Sydney Roosters playmaker Sam Walker in the head during a match.
NRL counsel Lachlan Gyles pushed back against the comparison, arguing that the 2024 incident was a fundamentally different scenario. Gyles noted that Sloan had been trapped in a tackle and was attempting to free himself to play the ball, a common in-game scenario that amounted to a lower level of carelessness. By contrast, Gyles argued, the momentum of the tackle involving Fifita and Young had already come to a complete stop before the contact occurred, eliminating any mitigating context. He told the panel the contact created an unreasonable risk of serious injury to Young, the level of Fifita’s carelessness was far higher than the 2024 case, and there were no mitigating factors to justify a lower grading. “It’s very hard to justify a movement that shows what you can see on that still. It has to be more than a low level of carelessness,” Gyles stated.
After deliberation, the two-person panel unanimously rejected Fifita’s appeal to downgrade the charge, upholding the Grade 2 ruling that brings an automatic two-match suspension. The suspension comes at a critical time for the Rabbitohs, who are fighting to secure a top-eight finish and a spot in the 2024 NRL finals. With three of their top four back-row options all sidelined for Friday’s clash against a premiership-contending Storm side, coach Wayne Bennett — who appeared in support of Fifita at the judiciary hearing alongside South Sydney football manager Jason Clark — will now be forced to field a much-changed forward pack in one of the team’s most important matches of the regular season.