Stu M wrote:

I've no problem with not being agreed with. But since my initial post on the first page of this thread I've had "how high is your horse" "snowflake", "Saints fans making mountain out of molehills, "crying over nothing" etc so not really the same is it?

Secondly, my user name on Red Vee isn't Stu M so you wouldn't know my posts anyway. And FWIW in my opinion Hohaia was out unconscious when the second punch landed, he wasn't moving and had no way of defending himself, not sure how you can deny that? We don't know if that single punch ended his career do we but it didn't help!

If we are being pedantic also, if you watch the game back Flower makes first contact with Hohaia running back which leads to Hohaia's intial (admittedly) cheap shot

Your opinion is irrelevant Stu, with all due respect. He wasn't unconscious. Go and watch the footage again before commenting further and you'll see he wasn't even unconscious AFTER the second punch, let alone before it. He was raising his right arm before Flower landed the 2nd blow (something you can't do if you're unconscious) and he's clearly conscious whilst the melee is going on after the 2nd punch is landed.

I can also say with absolute authority that the single blow didn't end his career, because the research tells us so. By a quirk of fate I was researching a court case that involved head trauma at the time of this incident and had been studying the research coming out of America on the effects of players in the NFL. The research (which ran into millions of dollars) conclusively concluded that the type of symptoms Hohaia was claiming was not caused by a single impact but by contusions caused across multiple smaller impacts. We already knew that Hohaia had suffered multiple concussions during his career and had to miss many games because of the after effects of these impacts. In addition he played on for 6 months of the following season so unless you're suggesting the Saint Helens club were negligent in their behaviour and hadn't sought or adhered to medical advice and protocols then we can confidently draw the conclusion that this didn't end his career.

If you want to say it didn't help then that's fine. But neither would Saints playing him afterwards. In fact, of the two, I think it fair to say that the latter was worse than the former.

As for the last part of your post; that is the most Saints centric thing I've read and contradicts your objections here. If you think that a push in the back warrants a player running 15 metres to elbow someone in the face, then surely you have no objection to the further escalation that Flower was then guilty of. You can't have it both ways.

Stu: You will not find many posters who will disagree with the fact that the particular part of the image you refer to is in bad taste and, with hindsight, could have been done better. I think the difference is that most posters on here dont think its as big a deal as 'some' Saints fans are making it out to be

Egg Chasing wrote:

If the late hit in the tackle wasn't him then yes you have us on a technicality of mistaken identity.

Or in typical Wigan fashion, we picked on the little guy. Thugs, scum etc etc blah blah all hate wigan.

Come on mate you're better than that. That's a childsish response. I'm merely pointing out that Hohaia didn't actually "start it" contrary to what Wigan fans say.

[Gareth] wrote:

Stu: You will not find many posters who will disagree with the fact that the particular part of the image you refer to is in bad taste and, with hindsight, could have been done better. I think the difference is that most posters on here dont think its as big a deal as 'some' Saints fans are making it out to be

Absolutely spot on.
Molehill mountain blah blah blah.

Stu M wrote:

Come on mate you're better than that. That's a childsish response. I'm merely pointing out that Hohaia didn't actually "start it" contrary to what Wigan fans say.

He may not have "started" it but by God he definitely escalated it!

Phuzzy wrote:

If you want to say it didn't help then that's fine. But neither would Saints playing him afterwards. In fact, of the two, I think it fair to say that the latter was worse than the former.

Agreed. Only Saints would know the medical condition of him the following season. That's not for me to comment on. As I say the punch didn't help, I never categorically said that the Flower punch ended his career.

On a final point though, after Hohaia iniitally tried to sue Saints, he has since retracted his comments and said that he'd wish he'd never bothered. He cleared Saints of any wrongdoing.

I think I'm exhausted on this now to be honest. It has at least generated a lot of discussion, I can't add anything further on it now than what I've already said. I have my opinion and its different than others, so be it.

Stu M wrote:

Agreed. Only Saints would know the medical condition of him the following season. That's not for me to comment on. As I say the punch didn't help, I never categorically said that the Flower punch ended his career.

On a final point though, after Hohaia iniitally tried to sue Saints, he has since retracted his comments and said that he'd wish he'd never bothered. He cleared Saints of any wrongdoing.

I think I'm exhausted on this now to be honest. It has at least generated a lot of discussion, I can't add anything further on it now than what I've already said. I have my opinion and its different than others, so be it.

You should comment on it as you do on others.
Anyhow your replies have in the main been honest and concise in your opinions, so good on you for that.

Stu M wrote:

On a final point though, after Hohaia iniitally tried to sue Saints, he has since retracted his comments and said that he'd wish he'd never bothered. He cleared Saints of any wrongdoing.

That tells you everything you need to know Stu. Apply the same reasoning to the actual Flower incident and you'll see that the accusations of him "ending his career" can only be false.

[Gareth] wrote:

Stu: You will not find many posters who will disagree with the fact that the particular part of the image you refer to is in bad taste and, with hindsight, could have been done better. I think the difference is that most posters on here dont think its as big a deal as 'some' Saints fans are making it out to be

What aggravates me about it (and why I respond to the posts on here) is that it's the usual anti-Wigan BS that we have to put up with constantly.

No mention of how great it is that we've put Sinfield and Burrow on there, or that we have pictures of them in our training ground (haven't we named a room after him also) or that we have players of our own knocked out on there, but someone draws a picture of Ben Flower punching someone and the RL world goes wild.

It just gets tiresome, to the point I wish we'd just pained it to p*** everyone off and had players from 2006 with wedges of cash coming out their pockets or something.