Rugby league great and new Warriors consultant Phil Gould has slammed the NRL judiciary after they found Kevin Proctor guilty of biting Shaun Johnson, stating he has now "lost faith in the whole system’’.
Proctor was handed a four-match ban by the judiciary on Tuesday after two-and-a-half hours of proceedings was deliberated by a three man panel for just eight minutes.
Throughout the hearing, Proctor stuck to his defence that his breathing was cut in the tackle which led to his mouth contacting Johnson's arm.
But the panel wasn't satisfied with that justification nor Johnson's, who testified in his defence after stating post-match he didn’t want it to go any further than the sendoff that had already occurred. Johnson backed up those comments in the hearing as well, stating he felt he wasn't bitten and had reacted in the moment.
But it all fell on deaf ears, leaving Gould dumbfounded.
"Very, very frustrating," Gould said on his podcast. "I have no faith in the whole system whatsoever. I have no faith in what happened on the field.
"I think it was totally overplayed, a total overreaction. And from there it spirals out of control into a judiciary hearing and everything we went through last night.
"I have no faith in the total process and I believe they've come up with an unsatisfactory verdict. In legal terms it's an unsafe verdict based on the evidence and what was said last night, I can't see how our game keeps doing this to itself and I've got no faith in the system at all.”
The part of the bizarre scenario that sticks with Gould the most is that Johnson – the supposed victim – is defending the accused.
"If I'm sitting on the judiciary panel I could only find a player guilty of a bite if the other player came before me and said 'He bit me. He bit me.' That's the only way I could find him guilty of a bite, if he's believable and I've got evidence to back that up.
“But if the player who was 'bitten' comes before me and says on reflection he doesn't think it's a bite, on reflection he overplayed it at the time. And as I've said, not his reaction, his initial reaction, his initial reaction during what was the alleged bite process was not of a man who had been bitten, simple as that. And that's what I see.
"What they have preferred is the vision and his reaction and his supposed reaction in the game, which wasn't immediate. Whatever was said on the field [has been considered] more accurate and more honest than what was delivered at the judiciary last night. So virtually they've told him last night he's lied to the judiciary. That's virtually what they've said."
Gould went on to suggest the NRL ran its hearings more like a "murder trial" with how it treated players at hearings.
"I find the whole thing very hollow, I've got to be honest, I've got no faith in it whatsoever and I don't like talking about it and I don't know how we change it to be honest.
"I rued the day that judicial processes became lawyers at 10 paces. We have a prosecution process that the league actually prosecutes and a determination to prove your innocence rather than them having to prove your guilt. I've got no faith in it whatsoever but that's the system that they all think we need."
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