The NRL's hip-drop headache is back, and this time, there's a whole new interpretation, and the numbers don't add up.
Two tackles. Two Eels victims. Two different outcomes.
Once again, a game that asks whether its judiciary has any idea where the line is.
There's a significant call for "blanket" suspensions across the NRL.
Dragons forward Ryan Couchman was handed a four-game ban last week after his tackle on Parramatta's J'maine Hopgood ended the forward's season with a ruptured ACL.
Couchman, who spent all of 2025 on the sidelines with an injury himself, was referred straight to the judiciary despite having a clean record.
The young Dragons forward was suspended for four games, with his return to be around ANZAC Day.
Less than a week later, Panthers hooker Mitch Kenny was charged with a strikingly similar tackle on Eels fullback Isaiah Iongi.
The result? One match on the sideline.
Iongi faces two months on the shelf with a syndesmosis injury.
Ivan Cleary, after the Panthers-Eels game, spoke disappointingly on the call, expressing how murky the waters are surrounding the rules.
"It actually isn't a hip-drop; it's dangerous contact. What once was a hip-drop is now dangerous contact, that's been brought into that context," Cleary expressed.
"It's just an eye for an eye - Izzy got injured, Mitch landed on the back of his leg."
The suspicion among many is that injury severity is quietly influencing suspensions.
Despite the NRL's insistence that outcomes shouldn't determine punishment.
It's a grey area the game can ill afford, and Roosters great Bryan Fletcher has had enough of it.
"Players don't mean it," he expressed on SEN's The Run Home.
"Couchman got four weeks, and the Mitch Kenny one is just [as bad], if not worse.
"You had a precedent, and you can't use 'the injury has something to do with it'.
"I'm hoping they didn't take that into consideration, but the Mitch Kenny [tackle] is exactly the same as Couchman's, and you've got to call it as you see it.
"I'm just talking purely about the suspension, I feel so sorry for young Couchman. Neither player means it, it's gotta be a blanket [rule]."
Kenny was suspended for one match and will miss the very anticipated Good Friday night match against the Melbourne Storm.
The review panel / judiciary is a joke so inconsistent .. when playing for the WestsTigers .. Lachlan Galvin did 1 hip drop tackle and his fist ever offence and got 4 weeks .. now playing for the Bulldogs in four weeks he has been penalised in 3 games for hip drop tackles and has received $$ penalties only .. 3 consecutive weeks .. how and why .. ??