Penrith hooker Mitch Kenny has received a one-game ban despite coach Ivan Cleary questioning whether his shot on Parramatta’s Isaiah Iongi was actually a hip-drop tackle.
With an early guilty plea, Kenny will be banned from the Good Friday blockbuster against Melbourne in the first major setback for the Panthers on their unbeaten start to 2026.
Kenny will miss an additional game against Canterbury in round six if he takes his case to the judiciary and loses.
High-profile Bulldogs duo Lachlan Galvin and Viliame Kikau both went on report in Saturday’s loss to Newcastle but can accept fines for grade-one dangerous contact.
Freddy Lussick is likely to start at hooker against the Storm in place of Kenny following an impressive first pre-season at the Panthers.
Kenny went to the sin bin early in the second half of Penrith’s 48-20 defeat of Parramatta on Saturday for a shot that looks to have left former teammate Iongi with a syndesmosis injury.
But after full-time, coach Cleary questioned whether Kenny’s shot was actually a textbook hip-drop tackle.
“I feel for ‘Issy’…He’s a great kid and a great player and you never want to see anyone get injured,” Cleary said.
“But I don’t think the hip-drop origin looked like that. It was a one-man tackle against a very fast, powerful player. At the time I actually thought, ‘what a great tackle’.”
Cleary pointed out Kenny never left the ground in his tackle, often an indicator of a hip-drop tackle, and intimated that the league was too quick to make an example of players who caused injuries.
“Ultimately it just feels like it’s going back to: if there’s a body, someone killed him,” Cleary said.
“When the hip-drop (term) was first introduced, it was totally different to that.”
The latest suspension comes after Kenny received a two-game ban for a hip-drop tackle on Sydney Roosters forward Nat Butcher early last season.
Iongi became the second Eels player in as many games to suffer a serious injury in a hip-drop tackle after J’Maine Hopgood ruptured his anterior cruciate ligament against St George Illawarra in round three.
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