The biggest story this week hasn’t been Roger Tuivasa-Sheck winning the Dally M, not event the actual Grand Final but if Billy Slater would escape suspension for the big dance and end his career on the field or the sideline.

This was always going to be big news, fuelled by experts throwing in their two cents on if it was a shoulder charge or if it wasn’t and if it warranted suspension. That topic has been flogged to death this week and we will never have everyone agree and it is not something I could be bothered with.  

For me it was actually the words of Phil Gould that resonated the most, echoing rubbing out champion players for big games. I am not a Gus disciple by any means but it raised another interesting point - should all games of rugby league be measured the same for suspensions?

No one can argue that a trial game means as much as lining up in Round 1. Similarly, representative and finals fixtures carry much more importance than a weekly NRL game. It is time the NRL introduced a tiered system?

If Slater was playing on next season and the Storm lost the game, not a chance a private jet would have been chartered with a three-hour hearing when he could miss a couple of matches to start 2019. The fact of the matter is this game is much more important and it needs to be treated as such with the judiciary.

At the moment each 100 points a player accrues equates to a one game suspension. In the regular season this is all well and good and should remain. The exact values of other games is not for me to decide but they do mean more.

Running out for your country or state needs to be weighted higher - 150-200 points?

Then finals games. Matches where (for all but two games per season) if a club loses they are out of the competition for the year. These also need to be assigned a similarly high value.

Then the grand final. The biggest match of the year. If the NRL is serious about this being the main event in the calendar then is needs to assign it equal to or greater than points to rep matches. Again for the sake of the exercise, 200-250 points?

The values I have used have just been plucked out of the air and can be debated by people that have actually played in these games and can add experience to what these matches mean.

As a neutral fan I can’t wait for the grand final, and purely from a spectacle point of view I am happy Slater is playing and hope Cooper Cronk does as well. The biggest stages deserve the best players and at the very least it is time for a conversation about changing the current system.

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