Spencer Leniu, the 26-year-old Samoa prop, has been suspended for two matches after making a money gesture with his hand as he left the field during his side's Rugby League World Cup semi-final against Australia in Sydney on Sunday.
Leniu had been sin-binned by referee Adam Gee late in the first half of the match, which Samoa lost 44-12. The gesture, made as he walked towards the tunnel, was widely read as a comment on the match officials.
He was charged on Monday with a grade three contrary conduct offence, AAP reported in a story carried by ABC News.
The suspension will cost him the first two matches of Parramatta's 2027 NRL season. Leniu won this year's premiership with the Sydney Roosters and joins Parramatta as a marquee off-season recruit.
He may contest the charge. If he does and the appeal fails, he faces an additional one-match suspension, taking the total to three.
ABC reported that the ban covers Parramatta's opening two rounds of 2027, one of which takes the club to the United States to face Gold Coast.
The offence was graded at three, and the two-match penalty follows from that grading. The option of contesting it carries its own consequence, which is set out in advance rather than decided afterwards.
Samoa's coach, Ben Gardiner, said Australia had enjoyed a "real home-ground advantage", and that Gee had given the Kangaroos several "home-ground calls". Samoa conceded a penalty count of 9-4.
Two Samoan halves, Ronald Volkman and Jarome Luai, avoided suspension for dangerous contact.
The tariff is the part worth reading twice. Accepting the charge costs two matches. Disputing it costs two matches if he succeeds and three if he does not. The difference between being right and being wrong is therefore one game.
That converts a question about conduct into a question about odds. A player who believes he has a better than one-in-three chance of success should contest the charge, a player who believes he has a worse chance should accept it, and what he actually did on Sunday enters the calculation at neither end.
The system is admirably consistent on this point. It does not ask a player whether he committed the offence. It asks him what he thinks of his own case, and then charges him for the answer.
Our analysts note that the loading applies only to unsuccessful appeals, which means the judiciary has priced its own fallibility at exactly one match while declining to say in which direction the error would run.
The Department of Unnecessary Research observes that the original offence was a gesture about money. It has now been assessed, graded and converted into a sum payable in matches, which is the only reply the game was ever likely to make.