The Roosters prop won’t return until round 10 after being suspended at the NRL judiciary on Monday night for calling Indigenous Broncos’ player Ezra Mam a “monkey”.
Spencer Leniu said he initially referred to his on-field racist sledge of Ezra Mam as “fun and games” because “I thought it was one brown man sledging another brown man”.
The NRL wanted Leniu to be hit with an eight-match ban, and the two-man judiciary panel of Sean Hampstead and Bob Lindner both agreed. NRL counsel Lachlan Gyles told the panel they had an opportunity to “draw a line in the sand and send a very clear and unambiguous message that there is no place for racism in our game”.
Leniu later said he wanted to fly to Brisbane and apologise, “face to face, man to man, without anyone knowing”.Roosters CEO Joe Kelly was asked why it had taken Leniu five whole days to apologise, and he said: “Until we all got back here to Australia, it was a situation where up to a point in time, Spencer wasn’t even aware it was a racial slur. We worked our way through this. We convened as soon as got back to Sydney.
Mam was not required to attend League HQ, but did provide a 12-paragraph statement, and wanted eight of those paragraphs to remain confidential. Video footage played at the hearing showed Leniu yelling in the direction of Mam before the Bronco became upset.
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