Nelson Asofa-Solomona will miss Melbourne’s grand final showdown with Penrith after the Storm prop failed in his bid to have a four-game NRL ban overturned.
Asofa-Solomona took an almighty roll of the dice on Monday, seeking to have a grade three careless high tackle charge reduced to a grade one.
If he had been successful he would have escaped with a fine and been cleared to face the Panthers.
Such downgrades are rarely seen but it was the New Zealand international’s only chance of escaping suspension for his hit on Sydney Roosters prop Lindsay Collins in the opening stages of last Friday’s preliminary final.
However, the argument put forward by Asofa-Solomona’s lawyer Nick Ghabar was dismissed in less than 15 minutes of deliberation.
The judiciary panel of Bob Lindner and Paul Simpkins upheld the charge to rule the Storm prop out of the grand final.
“All my energy is going to go towards helping my team to get the result,” Asofa-Solomoma said.
Collins was so badly dazed by the hit he got up and played the ball backwards, and he did not return to the field under the NRL’s concussion protocols.
Melbourne spared no expense in a bid to free their hulking prop for Sunday’s match, flying Asofa-Solomona and football manager Frank Ponissi to Monday’s hearing in Sydney and enlisting the help of Ghabar.
The Sydney lawyer was the man who represented Billy Slater and got the legendary former Storm fullback cleared to play in his farewell game in the 2018 grand final.
The start to the hearing was delayed by 40 minutes and after it finally began, the Roosters’ chief medical officer Dr Matthew Morgan was cross-examined by Ghabar and NRL counsel Lachlan Giles.
Morgan was unable to divulge whether Collins had passed his head injury assessment but Ghabar was eager to highlight how the Roosters prop had shown concussion symptoms in 11 of his 113 games in the NRL.
Asofa-Solomona’s lawyer then turned his attention to a comparable grade one high contact charge levelled at Queensland’s Valentine Holmes in game two of this year’s State of Origin series.
Ghabar argued Holmes’ hit on Payne Haas, unlike Asofa-Solomona’s, displayed direct and forceful contact to the head with no attempt to wrap the arms.
But unlike in Slater’s case, Ghabar had no such luck this time around.
Lindner and Simpkins backed up the NRL’s match review committee and said Asofa-Solomona’s hit was a grade three transgression.
The ruling means Sunday’s grand final will be the first of five games for which the front-rower is unavailable after Asofa-Solomona earned an extra game for his challenge.
It is unclear whether the Storm prop will try to use Test matches to count towards his suspension but should Melbourne make the World Club Challenge, Asofa-Solomona could be back as soon as round one of 2025.
In the short term, Melbourne coach Craig Bellamy will have to find a replacement for Asofa-Solomona when he names his grand final team on Tuesday.
Six-game rookie Lazarus Vaalepu and Joe Chan were part of the Storm’s preliminary final squad and loom as the most likely options.
