'A bit of a joke': Castleford Tigers coach comments on Leeds Rhinos star Cameron Smith's ban and appeal win

The RFL’s match review panel handed Smith a one-game penalty notice for grade B dangerous contact on Tigers’ Danny Richardson in last Thursday’s derby at the Jungle. An operational rules tribunal reduced the charge to grade A and replaced the ban with a £250 fine after the Rhinos captain challenged the grading.

The incident involved what seemed to be a nudge by Smith after Richardson had kicked and, speaking at his weekly preview press conference today (Thursday), Lingard said justice has been done. “I thought it was a bit of a joke he got banned in the first place,” Lingard said.

“Let’s be honest, for me - speaking from my own personal opinion - if we are banning people for that, then we need to have a look at it. I don’t think there was any malice in it, or any intent.

“There certainly wasn’t any force in it. If we are sitting people down for a week or two for something like that, I think we need to give our heads a shake.”

Leeds accepted a grade C head contact charge and one-match penalty notice handed by the review panel to prop Justin Sangare, following a separate incident which was not penalised during last week’s game. Of that, Lingard said: “It is head-on-head contact and the new interpretation of the law.

“That’s something we are going to have to get used to. If that happens in week one he probably gets a red card, but where we are now - we all admitted week one went over the top and we’ve pulled back a little bit on that now - I’ve no issues with that whatsoever.

“In week one it would probably have been an overreaction and he would have been sent off or at least sat down for 10 minutes on that one, but I think a bit of common sense has prevailed in respect of the decisions now on the field.”

Tigers have had only one suspension this season, Liam Watts missing four games after being sent off in round one against Wigan Warriors. Lingard is pleased with the way his side have responded to the crack down on high tackles.

“We worked a lot in pre-season on the new tackle height and tackle technique,” Lingard - whose team play host to Salford Red Devils on Friday - said. “We did as much as we possibly could in that respect and I think you can see that with the lack of suspensions we’ve had.

“We’ve had one suspension and a couple of charges which didn’t result in suspensions, which were for different issues anyway. I’m pretty pleased with how we’ve responded as a group to the tackle height.”

Watts has gone through two games since his ban without any disciplinary problems and Lingard added: “He worked really hard in the time he had off and has made a conscious effort to lower his tackle height and get his technique better.”