Raiders stars speak out as NRL high-shot spree threatens to go too far

Josh Papalii, Jack Wighton and Josh Hodgson are all suspended this weekend as part of the fallout from a refereeing frenzy in Brisbane last round which amounted to 14 sin bins, three send offs and a whopping 24 charges laid by the match review committee.

Queensland prop Papalii was slugged the hardest, and will miss three matches with the early guilty plea he entered for his second-half careless high tackle on Canterbury Bulldog Katoa Tuipulotu, for which he was sent off.

"I'm not too stoked with it to be honest, it feels like a lot of people in suits that are just making up the rules and making it harder for us," Scott said.

"It's rugby league, I don't know what they want it to turn into. At the end of the day it's one man running as hard as they can into another man.

"These things are going to happen. Me as a rugby league player that's what I've signed up for, that's the risk I take when I run out onto the field each week. What goes around comes around, it's a contact sport, everyone's competing to be the best team.

"I've been happy with the rules for the last 100 odd years or whatever it is. With the crackdown now it's just making it harder for us as players. They need to think of us as players in the end because we're the people out there putting our bodies on the line for the game."

Scott said last year's introduction of the six-again rule mixed with the NRL's crackdown on dangerous contact had created a tricky combination.

"They've sped up the game and now they expect us to be even cleaner when the game's as fast as it is now," Scott said.

"I'm sure a lot of players don't go out there to hit people in the head. The fatigue in the game these days, it feels like it's doubled out there on the field, a lot more injuries have happened and a lot more stray arms happen just through fatigue.

"They don't even give penalties away so you can't even slow it down at all which is good for a fan to watch it, but I'm not even too sure if the fans like the new style of the game.

"We don't go out there to do that but it's a contact game and those things happen in the game.

"That's something we're going to have to adapt to and try and not do otherwise we're stuck with 11 people on the field like we were last week."

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Papalii's send off was a pivotal point in the Raiders-Bulldogs clash.

With Jack Wighton already in the sin bin, it seemed to galvanise the out-of-form Green Machine who scored two tries without Papalii on the field to snap a five-match losing run.

Back rower Corey Harawira-Naera, who scored a try in the win over his old club, said NRL players would need to adapt to the NRL's new stance.

"There's always going to be accidents in the game, the one like Paps[Papalii] on the weekend, he wasn't aiming for the chin but he got him flush," Harawira-Naera said.

"It is a high shot at the end of the day. We don't want to lose our players and we're losing Paps for three weeks now, it's a good lesson for all of us.

"It's a real touchy subject and I feel like it's going to take a lot of time for the NRL to get it right and the refs to get it right and I'm not expecting them to get it right straight away either.

"We're all going to take a little step back this week. We've had a bit of a wrestle session this morning talking about and communicating about ways of trying to avoid putting yourself in that position to hit someone high.

"It's a hard one. I do see the reasoning behind it and I do support it but accidents are going to happen. As players we have to adapt."