Referees missed Jarome Luai's "grubby" act in the NRL grand final, which has led to a lot of criticism of him.
The huge win could have been ruined by something that could have gotten Jarome Luai kicked off the field.
Five-eighth Jarome Luai of the Penrith Panthers has been criticized after it looked like he kicked Parramatta Eels rival Isaiah Papali'i while the second rower was on the ground during Sunday's NRL grand final.
Penrith proved that they were one of the best NRL teams ever by beating Parramatta in the grand final by a score of 28-12.
But the incident that happened 23 minutes into the first half could make the win less impressive.
Papali'i was in the middle of making a tackle on Brian To'o, who had just run back into the game.
Luai can be seen pushing Papali'i hard as he and another Panther tried to bring To'o to the ground.
As part of the tackle, Papali'i falls to the ground, and it looks like Luai kicks the Eel.
Neither Ashley Klein, the referee, nor the people in the bunker saw what happened, and nothing was done on the field at the time.
On Monday, the NRL said that the match review committee did not charge Luai.
People all over the country who watched the event on TV said it could have left the Panthers with only 12 men for at least 10 minutes.
In the end, it wasn't that important.
During the first 10 minutes of Sunday's NRL grand final, Parramatta looked like a team that could make Penrith's machine break down.
But, as sure as night follows day, the Panthers got into gear and made sure that the Eels would have to wait another 37 years for a championship.
Nathan Brown had not played in the NRL since round 17, so Parramatta brought him back to add some "mongrel" to their pack and make Penrith halfback Nathan Cleary nervous.
But by the time coach Brad Arthur put the former NSW Origin lock into the game in the 30th minute, the Eels were already down by three tries.
The forwards for Parramatta had said that if they were going to beat the Panthers, they had to win the fight in the middle.
But by the end of the first half, their starting pack had only gone 146 meters.
Brian To'o, a winger for Penrith, had already made 142m on his own by that time.
In the end, the Panthers won 28–12, but early on, the Eels gave fans hope that they could beat Penrith and stop them from winning a second straight premiership.
They gave Cleary trouble on his kicks and made To'o's yardage runs less painful by kicking to him.
Five-eighth Dylan Brown almost caught them off guard when he sent a chip over the top for Mitchell Moses to chase early in the tackle count. They took a chance by offloading and running shortside.
In the forwards, they fought as hard as the Panthers for a short time, but when Stephen Crichton scored in the 12th minute, Parramatta fell apart.
"They played too well and too fast for us in the first half," Arthur said.
"I told the guys that now is not the time to look back and figure out what went wrong. We just lost to a better team."
Arthur's team tightened up, stopped offloading, and winger Waqa Blake, who had trouble with Cleary's bombs in week one of the finals, didn't want anything to do with the Panthers' swirling floater kicks.
The Eels played it safe, which made it easy for the Panthers to suffocate them into submission.
In the first 40 minutes, Parramatta only had one play-the-ball inside Penrith's 20-meter zone.
Clint Gutherson made mistakes that were out of character at the back, and the Eels' insistence on short dropouts gave Penrith field position and helped them win.
By the time Brown came on, the damage had already been done, and Gutherson and Jake Arthur's late tries didn't do much to bother the Panthers.