League: Dogs leave Hannant slur on the field

Canterbury will leave the slur which sparked an angry response from prop Ben Hannant after Friday night's NRL win over the Wests Tigers, on the field.

The Bulldogs on Saturday decided against lodging a formal complaint under the league's vilification code after Hannant, a Mormon, was reportedly the subject of a religion-based verbal attack from Tigers' prop Bryce Gibbs.

The ugly verbal exchange captured by television cameras came after the fulltime siren in the Dogs' 24-4 breakthrough victory.

Hannant was restrained by a Bulldogs trainer while Tigers captain Robbie Farah later said he had pulled forward Chris Heighington away.

Hannant and Gibbs both refused to comment after the match.

"I have spoken with both the NRL and Wests Tigers CEO Steve Humphries today and all parties have agreed to leave the matter on the field,' Bulldogs CEO Todd Greenberg said in a statement.

"Neither Ben nor the club will be making any further comments in relation to this matter.'

It has been an eventful few weeks for test star Hannant, who recently revealed he was homesick for Queensland and wanted out of the final year of his contract with Canterbury, a situation still yet to be resolved.

The NRL treats religious discrimination in a similar vein to on-field racism under its vilification code.

"Anything that happens under the vilification code requires a formal complaint,' NRL chief operating officer Graham Annesley said.

But the culprit could yet be dealt with by the NRL match review committee if it deems a charge can be laid under its rules.

"Obviously there's a match review process that goes on on Monday,' Annesley said.

"I can't pre-judge anything that might come out of that.'

The Bulldogs notched their second win of the year to finally get their season moving again.

Their only other victory had been the round three 60-14 demolition of the Sydney Roosters and coach Kevin Moore conceded the magnitude of that victory may have given his side a false impression of where they were at.

"Whilst we got away with plenty of points on the board, it was a hot day, the Roosters were probably there for the kill,' he said.

"Sometimes you just fall into bad form and you can't see it happening - lack of confidence, lack of troops and a bit of cohesion.

"You get it back by starting with attitude and just playing strong and defending strong so hopefully next week we've got to improve on that.

"It was good (against the Tigers) but we certainly need to go to another level again next week and get consistency.'

-AAP