PORT City Breakers second-rower Dan Dumas is free to tackle Wauchope at Lank Bain Sporting Complex on Saturday despite being found guilty at the Group 3 judiciary on Wednesday night.
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Dumas was sent from the field in the Breakers' 32-20 loss to Wingham last Saturday, but successfully achieved a downgrade from reckless to a grade one careless charge.
He was facing a five-week ban for the tackle that saw Tigers front-rower Blake Fraser knocked out.
Fraser, however, returned to the field later in the match.
The decision highlights a level of inconsistency across Group 3, but the Breakers remained satisfied with the outcome.
"In hindsight he shouldn't have been sent, but that's done now and we move on," Breakers coach Dan Kemp said.
Group 3 chairman Wayne Bridge remained non-committal when asked if it made the call from referee Jason Higgins to send Dumas off the wrong one.
"There was another player in the tackle with Dan and the impact he had on the player put him in a position where Dan made contact with the head as he was falling," Bridge said.
"That penalty was sufficient for them to finish the game short, but it obviously does have an impact on the game.
"Dan had video and the video showed in his favour that it wasn't as serious as the referee thought."
The Breakers, however, will be without captain Adrian Daley who was rubbed out for one game for the use of offensive language.
He was facing an eight-week suspension for two separate charges.
"The disputing a referee's decision charge was dropped and then they lowered the other charge from serious to high which put it in a different grading bracket," Bridge said.
"AD pleaded guilty to that and he got one week."
Kemp was disappointed at the decision, but said Daley was due to have a week off to rest a niggling hamstring injury.
"Any time you get a player suspended it's a poor result," Kemp said.
"(But) I'd like to know how many sentences that are said out there in a first grade game of football that use that word."
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