Richard Silverwood has his say on Sione Mata’utia’s red card against Huddersfield Giants

No round of Super League is without controversy and this week’s of course was no different.

It started with a red card just a quarter of the way into the Sky Sports game between St Helens and Huddersfield Giants.

Two of the top three, it was set to be a tight battle but the Champions St Helens showed their class nilling the Giants in a brilliant 25-0 win on the back of some superb defence.

Impressively, it was them who went down to 12 men when star second-row Sione Mata’utia was shown a red card in a controversial incident when he picked up an injured player in the shape of Danny Levi.

It’s a first for Super League with plenty of players given long bans for such incidents including Levi himself but it’s the first time a player has been shown a red card for an incident like this.

Unsurprisingly, it caused a lot of discussion with former Super League referee Richard Silverwood even having his say on the incident.

He took to social media to defend the decision using the injuries to Alex Walmsley and Mose Masoe as reasons why this is something we must remove from our game.

He said: “Don’t really have an issue with that if that’s the stance. Moving injured players is fair enough. Given injuries like Masoe suffered and Walmsley for that matter, you can’t pick up injured players. Fair call.”