Peter Jessup: Kiwi has best defence money can buy

Expect Issac Luke to be exonerated of a grade one striking charge when he fronts the NRL judiciary tonight.

For a start, he has the best defence money can buy.

Geoff Bellew SC (equivalent to our QC) has a 75 per cent success rate before the judiciary.

Last week, Bellew represented the Sharks captain Paul Gallen on a high tackle charge in his first game back from a two-week suspension for a similar offence.

Gallen got off.

And then he represented Bulldogs hooker Michael Ennis who was charged with a "chicken wing" hold-down.

Watch the TV replays of what Ennis did last weekend and then the tackle by Titans backrower Anthony Laffranchi on Luke in the 79th minute of the Souths-Titans game which resulted in Luke being cited and the impression is that the Ennis incident was certainly worth a review and if he got off, how come they bothered to charge Luke?

Luke is 174cm and 84kg while Laffranchi is 185cm and 100kg. If the Hawera hooker was stupid enough to deliberately run at a big forward with his elbow raised he'd be lucky to make contact at chest height and it certainly wouldn't hurt them.

It is props and secondrowers who deliberately raise the elbow as they go into a tackle.

He was not running with his elbow up - it was a defensive reaction to the coming hit from Laffranchi.

He was not penalised or called out and spoken to at the time of the incident so the two referees and two touch judges obviously did not think what happened was something that demanded action.

Bellew's success rate in talking through the specifics of the physics involved in tackle hits has been described thus: "He speaks to the footballer in them."

Bellew doesn't come cheap but for the Souths club there was never a split-second's thought about whether to go in to bat for Luke, despite the fact he could have admitted the charge then served his suspension by missing the test and so be available for the next game against the Tigers.

"The player told us he wants to play for his country and we want to make sure he does," said Rabbitohs chief executive Shane Richardson.

"We'll give him all the back-up we can." He has long been a supporter of representative football and of making players available and when at Penrith saw to it that Joe Galuvao got a A$25,000 ($32,000) bonus when he made the Kiwis because that's what others had received for making the Kangaroos.

"The higher the level they achieve, the better they are when they come back to you," he told the Herald yesterday.

"We as a club are very proud of the fact that Issac Luke made the Kiwis from Souths."

Yes, there have been too many Kiwis suspended out of test matches - John Lomax, Jarrod McCracken, Quentin Pongia, Stephen Kearney, Ali Lauititi to mention just a few key performers.

The problem is not an Aussie conspiracy, as radio talkback dribblers would have you believe. In most cases those players were legitimately charged and sentenced in accordance with NRL procedure.

The problem is that they committed an offence in a club competition and suffered the out-of-proportion penalty of being forced to sit sideline for an international.

If the NRL panel does find Luke guilty, what gives them the right to deny the 21-year-old a lifetime experience.