'Normally a suspension': Loophole comes to light as Jarome Luai learns punishment

Jarome Luai and Zac Lomax have both escaped with fines after ugly incidents in State of Origin 2 - and it's all because of a unique loophole in the NRL system. Luai and Lomax were both put on report in the first half of NSW's 26-24 loss to Queensland on Wednesday night.
Luai grabbed the face of Maroons forward Reuben Cotter in what appeared very close to an eye-gouge, while Lomax lashed out and elbowed Trent Loiero in the head after a tackle. Luai was cleared of an eye-gouge by the NRL match review committee, and was slugged with a $3900 fine rather than a suspension.
The NSW five-eighth was hit with a grade-two contrary conduct charge for unnecessary contact with an opponent's face. But under the NRL's punishment system, incidents that occur in Origin and finals games carry lighter sanctions.
If the Luai incident had occurred in an NRL game, he'd normally be hit with a suspension. But because it happened in State of Origin, it's only a fine. The system was brought in so players' clubs aren't unfairly affected by their actions in representative games. It also prevents players being banned from finals games for incidents that aren't overly serious.
Luai's $3900 fine is 13 per cent of his $30,000 match payment. Lomax was charged with grade-one dangerous contact and fined $21000 (seven per cent of his match payment).
Luai's return to the Origin arena was overshadowed by the incident with Cotter. Queensland fullback Kalyn Ponga made a raking action to sideline officials after witnessing Luai's actions, and he appeared very lucky to escape a suspension.
Andrew Johns said "it looked bad" in commentary, while NSW coach Laurie Daley defended the incident after the match. "I thought it was just a facial," Daley said. "We saw a fair few of them in Game 1 too."
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The incidents with Luai and Lomax were part of a historic run of nine-straight penalties that Queensland received to start the game. The penalty count was 8-0 at half-time, and when the Maroons received their ninth it was the first time that had ever occurred in a State of Origin game.
Referee Ashley Klein copped plenty of backlash for his performance, although NSW did win the six-again count 6-2 and had 55 per cent possession. When asked about the 10-2 penalty count after the game, Daley momentarily remained silent before eventually responding: "I can't tell you what I really think".
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Blues captain Isaah Yeo admitted his team weren't disciplined enough and only had themselves to blame. "There were certainly a few we were shooting ourselves with and they're just penalties," Yeo said.
"Some others were 50-50s. Some nights you get them and some nights you don't. But what you can't do is just go drop the ball in the next set when you've got the ball. You would obviously like that to be a bit more even, but we were our own worst enemies at time."
Queensland surged out to a 26-6 lead at half-time, and NSW fell agonisingly short of their greatest comeback in Origin history with 18 unanswered points in the second half. Goal-kicking proved a massive difference, with Lomax only managing two conversions after the Blues outscored Queensland five tries to four.
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'Once the amanita poison is within the body, unfortunately the body tends to recycle it internally,' said Warrillow, who treated all four lunch guests. Gail Patterson, 70, and Heather Wilkinson, 66, were considered too weak for a liver transplant and died on August 4 from multiple organ failure, he said. Don Patterson, 70, received a transplant but died on August 5. Ian Wilkinson was in an induced coma on life support but responded to treatment and was eventually discharged in September. 'We thought he was going to die,' said Warrillow. 'He was very close.' Patterson told the court she took up foraging for mushrooms in early 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic, when she would take long walks with her children in the countryside. Native to Europe, death cap mushrooms arrived in Australia by accident, expert mycologist Tom May told the court. They grow near oak trees and only appear above ground for a couple of weeks before decaying, he said. Most sightings in Victoria are in April and May, and some people upload photos of them to the citizen science website iNaturalist, May added. Christine McKenzie, a retired former poisons information specialist at the Victorian Poisons Information Centre, told the court she spotted death cap mushrooms in Loch – about 28 kilometers (17 miles) from Patterson's home – and uploaded them to iNaturalist on April 18, 2023. She'd been out walking with her husband, grandson and dog, and said she disposed of the mushrooms to avoid accidental poisoning but conceded that more could grow. Citing analysis of cellphone tower connections, the prosecution alleges it's possible Patterson saw McKenzie's post and went to the same location on April 28 to pick the mushrooms. Store records show that within two hours of the alleged visit, Patterson bought a dehydrator, which the prosecution said she used to dry the toxic mushrooms. Patterson concedes she bought the dehydrator, saying there is a 'very small season' of availability for wild mushrooms and she wanted to preserve them, and 'a whole range of things.' She denied foraging for mushrooms in Loch. May, the fungus expert, said that on May 21, 2023, he saw death cap mushrooms growing in Outtrim, about 19 kilometers (11 miles) from Leongatha, and posted the sighting to iNaturalist. 'I don't think I typed the street name in, but I put a very precise latitude-longitude geocode with the observation,' he said. Prosecutors said analysis of Patterson's cellphone movements placed her in the Outtrim region on May 22, when they say it's possible Patterson picked the mushrooms. The defense said broader analysis of her phone records suggests it's possible her cellphone picked up different base-station signals within her own home. 'These records are consistent with the accused never leaving the house,' said Mandy. Patterson denied ever foraging for mushrooms in Outtrim, and said she couldn't remember ever visiting the iNaturalist website and did not see the reported sightings. On August 1, three days after the lunch, Patterson was in hospital, having been convinced by doctors to stay after earlier discharging herself against their advice. They had impressed on her the importance of being treated for death cap mushroom poisoning because symptoms are known to worsen with time. Her children should be there too, they said, because she said they had eaten some of the leftovers on Sunday night, albeit with the mushrooms and pastry scraped off. It was in hospital on August 1 that Patterson said she had a conversation with Simon, her estranged husband, that made her start thinking about how toxic mushrooms had come to be in the meal. Patterson said she told Simon that she had dried mushrooms in a dehydrator, and he replied: 'Is that how you poisoned my parents, using that dehydrator?' Erin Patterson told the jury that Simon's comment had caused her to do 'a lot of thinking about a lot of things.' 'It got me thinking about all the times that I'd used (the dehydrator), and how I had dried foraged mushrooms in it weeks earlier, and I was starting to think, what if they'd gone in the container with the Chinese mushrooms? Maybe, maybe that had happened.' In his evidence, Simon Patterson denied ever suggesting to Erin that she poisoned his parents with the dehydrator. 'I did not say that to Erin,' he said. I was scared that they would blame me for it … for making everyone sick Erin Patterson, defendant The next day, on August 2, Patterson dropped her children at school, then returned home, retrieved the dehydrator, and dumped it at a waste and recycling center. She was seen on closed-circuit television. Asked about her actions, Patterson said child protection officers were due to visit her house that afternoon, and she was 'scared' about having a conversation about the meal and the dehydrator. 'I was scared that they would blame me for it … for making everyone sick,' she said. 'I was scared they'd remove the children,' she added. Analysis showed remnants of death cap mushrooms in the dehydrator, the prosecution said. Patterson acknowledged that when she dumped the dehydrator, she knew that doctors suspected death cap mushroom poisoning. She also accepted that she did not tell medical staff that foraged mushrooms may have been in the meal. Patterson said she had diarrhea after the lunch but brushed it off as a bout of gastro. She was not as ill as her lunch guests – and during her testimony, she offered a reason why. Gail Patterson had brought an orange cake to lunch to share, and Erin Patterson testified that after the guests left, she found herself eating slice, after slice, after slice. After consuming about two-thirds of the cake, she made herself throw up, she told the court. In her closing address, prosecutor Rogers said no evidence was offered suggesting expelling tainted food can lessen the impact of amanita toxin. To the jury, she said, 'we suggest (you) reject her evidence about vomiting after the meal as a lie.' In his closing argument, defense lawyer Mandy asked why, if it was a lie, Patterson hadn't been more precise about when she vomited? 'She surely would have said to you that it happened as soon as the guests left, because the earlier the better,' he said to the jury. During her testimony, Patterson also offered an explanation about how the death cap mushrooms came to be in the meal. Reject her evidence about vomiting after the meal as a lie Prosecutor Nanette Rogers to the jury Patterson said she dried store-bought and foraged mushrooms in her dehydrator and would store them in plastic containers in the pantry. If one box was full, she'd start another, she said. Patterson said that, back in April, she had bought dried mushrooms from an Asian grocer in Melbourne, but didn't use them at the time because they were 'too pungent.' Instead, she stored them in a plastic container in the pantry. Mandy asked her: 'Do you have a memory of putting wild mushrooms that you dehydrated in May or June of 2023 into a container which already contained other dried mushrooms?' 'Yes, I did do that,' Patterson said. Patterson said that, on July 29, as she cooked the lunch, she tasted the mixture of garlic, shallots and mushrooms and decided it was 'a little bland,' so she added dried mushrooms that had been stored in a plastic container in her pantry. Mandy asked her what she had believed to be in the plastic container in the pantry. 'I believed it was just the mushrooms that I bought in Melbourne,' Patterson said. 'And now, what do you think might have been in that tub?' Mandy asked. 'Now I think that there was a possibility that there were foraged ones in there as well,' she said. The Crown contends there was no Asian grocer and that Patterson faked illness after the meal to suggest that she, too, had suffered symptoms of death cap mushroom poisoning. Rogers alleged Patterson initially left hospital because she knew that neither she, nor her children, had consumed the poisoned lunch. When Patterson was examined on Monday, July 31, a doctor found 'no clinical or biochemical evidence of amanita poisoning or any other toxicological substance' in her system, Rogers said. 'By that stage, all four of the lunch guests were in induced comas,' she added. Of allegations Patterson faked her illness following the lunch, Mandy said it made no sense that she'd refuse medical help and discharge herself from hospital early, if she was pretending to have eaten poisoned mushrooms. 'If you're pretending to be sick, you're going to be saying to the medical staff, 'Hook me up, pump me full of drugs, I am very, very sick. Please,'' Mandy said. Furthermore, he said it was possible to have milder symptoms of amanita poisoning, depending on how much was consumed, according to expert evidence that said weight and age were also factors. This family I swear to f***ing god Erin Patterson in a message to friends Under cross-examination, Rogers put it to Patterson that she had two faces: A public one where she appeared to have a good relationship with her in-laws, and a private one expressed in her Facebook chat groups, where she vented to friends that she'd had enough of the family. In messages to Facebook friends read out in court, Patterson expressed her frustration that her in-laws would not get involved in her dispute with Simon over child support. 'I'm sick of this shit I want nothing to do with them,' she wrote in December 2022. 'I thought his parents would want him to do the right thing but it seems their concern about not wanting to feel uncomfortable and not wanting to get involved in their sons personal matters are overriding that so f*** em.' And another message read: 'This family I swear to f***ing god.' Asked by her defense counsel Mandy how she felt about that statement now, an emotional Patterson said: 'I wish I'd never said it … I feel ashamed for saying it, and I wish the family didn't have to hear that I said that. 'They didn't deserve it.' In his closing arguments, Mandy characterized the terse exchanges as signs of a 'brief spat' that was 'resolved amicably.' Mandy said there was no motive for triple murder, and that there were in fact several reasons why Patterson would not want to kill her guests. She had no money issues, lived in a big house, and had almost full-time custody of her two young children, who were very close to their grandparents, he said. The defense argues that Patterson unknowingly picked death cap mushrooms, dried them in her dehydrator and stored them in the pantry, until the day she inadvertently threw them into the pan. She starts panicking and she starts lying from that point. Defense lawyer Colin Mandy SC Mandy said some of the 'ridiculous' propositions included that Patterson planned to kill four lunch guests and 'thought it would all be passed off as some kind of strange case of gastro, where everyone died, except her.' To the prosecution's allegation that Patterson had 'blitzed' the death cap mushrooms into a powder to hide them in the meal, he said: 'Why would you need to hide mushrooms in a mushroom paste? It doesn't make any sense.' The moment in hospital when Erin said Simon asked her if she had used the dehydrator to poison his parents was 'when the wheels start turning,' Mandy said. 'She starts panicking and she starts lying from that point,' he said. 'What followed from this moment were actions taken to conceal … the fact that foraged mushrooms went into the meal because she feared if that was found out, she would be held responsible.' However, Rogers said Patterson had complete control over events and used it to 'devastating effect.' The cook had 'told too many lies,' said Rogers, as she urged the jury to reject Patterson's claims that she didn't know the meal was laced with toxins. 'We say there is no reasonable alternative explanation for what happened to the lunch guests, other than the accused deliberately sourced death cap mushrooms and deliberately included them in the meal she served them, with an intention to kill them,' Rogers said. The jury is expected to retire to consider their verdict this week – their decision must be unanimous.