Cartwright has issued a firm stance after a fiery Hull derby.
16:05, 10 Sep 2025Updated 22:52, 10 Sep 2025
Hull KR’s Elliot Minchella copped a sin bin but only received a Grade A charge for his hit on Hull FC’s Lewis Martin
Hull FC head coach John Cartwright has been left baffled by Elliot Minchella’s disciplinary verdict – especially when compared to some of the charges received by his own players.
The Hull KR captain was sin-binned during Sunday’s derby after a clear head-high shot on Hull winger Lewis Martin. The Match Review Panel then deemed the offence worthy of a Grade A charge – the same grading that Amir Bourouh got for a late push on the passer – an offence which ironically was on Minchella. Both charges saw each player receive one disciplinary point on the RFL system.
Meanwhile, Cartwright says he doesn’t understand how the judiciary can hand both incidents the same charge. Furthermore, he believes there were more sour incidents that went unpunished from both sides alongside the game’s most high-profile moment, which saw Jack Ashworth suspended for seven games after a Grade E striking charge on Rovers half-back Mikey Lewis.
Speaking to Hull Live, Cartwright said: “The ins and outs of how the judiciary works – I’m still getting my head around it. Elliot got a point for that (the hit on Martin) and Amir got a point for pushing him over in a separate incident. If you line the two things up side by side, I just wonder how they come to the conclusion that they both deserve one point.
“There will be an explanation but explanations are just words. We all have an opinion on what happened. I have an opinion about what happened and so does the match review committee. I’m sure Hull KR do as well. We’ve just got to deal with what we’ve been dealt, and we got dealt pretty heavily.”
On Ashworth’s charge specifically, Cartwright continued: “Any player that gets suspended for that length of time is sad. I’m not condoning the incident – I spoke with Jack after the game and I spoke again with him when we did the review.
“It was a derby game and it was a heated battle, and for anyone to think that was the only incident in the game, then they weren’t watching the game properly. There were things in the game from both sides that, as coaches, you don’t want to see, but I feel Jack has been punished heavily for an incident when there were a whole lot of other things in the game that could have been just as serious.
“Again, I haven’t been here long enough to fully get the understanding of how the judiciary works. He had a four-point carryover which led him into seven games, so he basically got the minimum penalty for the charge that he was given.
“He could have got more, but I might have to be here a long time before I fully understand the decisions of the match review and the judiciary. We plead our case and that’s what they came up with.”
Also copping bans were Jordan Rapana, Amir Bourouh, and Yusuf Aydin. Meanwhile, Cartwright believes the system which now scores players disciplinary points before receiving different ban thresholds is an issue – something which Rovers boss Willie Peters also commented on the week before last.
“It’s been a tough week,” Cartwright stated. “I don’t know if the games were looked at more closely; I’m not sure, but it’s probably a sign of a bigger problem with the points system that they’ve created.
“There are going to be players that have earned points and going into next year, they will be carrying those points. We’re going to be constantly losing players – they carry them for 12 months and you don’t have to do a lot to lose a point these days.
“I’ve read some comments on it but unless you fully pressure test a major rule like they’ve brought in here, you’re going to get to these positions, as they haven’t been tested.”
Bourouh and Aydin are both suspended for one game, while Rapana is out for two – a scenario that ends his career prematurely should Hull fail to make the Super League play-offs.
“The fact that that is a possibility is really disappointing,” Cartwright said. “Again, it’s a result of some points that he has accumulated earlier in the year. The grade ones – you get three or four of those through the year and then you open yourself up. He got a couple of late shots that carried points and now he’s automatically suspended. Those ones, I probably understand; it’s the lower-level grades where you pick up a point here and there, and unfortunately, they keep adding up.”
Cartwright also praised the toughness of his side in what was a fiery derby affair – in particular Martin, who got straight back up after copping a head-high hit.
He added: “To everyone’s credit, when any of our boys copped something, which is probably why there wasn’t a lot of talk about it, they got straight to their feet. We didn’t have players lying down begging for penalties – they got straight up to their feet. I’m certainly very proud of the toughness our boys showed.”