Boyd Cordner admits losing Sonny Bill Williams to suspension would be a massive blow to the Sydney Roosters six rounds out from the NRL finals.
The NRL match review committee on Monday will decide if Williams has a case to answer after the dual international was placed on report for a shoulder charge to the head of Newcastle forward Willie Mason at Hunter Stadium on Sunday.
While Williams exchanged banter on Twitter with his former Canterbury teammate and then joked that Mason headbutted him, the Kiwi superstar is likely to face sanctioning.
Williams has already been charged with a grade-one careless high tackle on Parramatta’s Matt Ryan in round 13 this season and has 56 carryover points from that offence.
If he’s hit with a similar grading, he will spend some time on the sidelines unless he successfully fights the charge at the judiciary on Wednesday.
Cordner said Williams’ fate rested with the league, but was confident the second-placed Roosters could cope without him, as the premiership favourites showed in a 40-0 rout of Cronulla last weekend.
“Obviously Sonny’s massive to our team and it would be a massive blow but I think, like we showed last week against the Sharks, we can perform without him,” Cordner said on Monday.
“We’re just hoping for the best with Sonny at the moment. I haven’t even looked at it.
“I was on the other side of the field when it happened, so I didn’t get a good view of it.
“So we’ll just see what happens today.”
Roosters coach Trent Robinson said after his side’s 28-12 win over Newcastle that he was confident Williams would be cleared.
“That arm is sort of separated from the side, so it’s not a shoulder charge,” he said.
The shoulder charge was outlawed this year but Cordner conceded it had always been a big part of Williams’ game.
“Obviously it’s a part of Sonny’s game and he’s the one who probably can pull off a shoulder charge,” he said.
“But I didn’t see it, so we’ll probably have to wait.”
Mason, who faces a spell on the sidelines with a suspected torn calf, was left battered by the Knights’ bruising defeat and claimed he’d been targeted by his former team.
“Not at all,” Cordner said.
“Obviously Mase is a big figure and a big part of their team. So if you stop his go-forward, then you go a long way towards stopping the Newcastle Knights’ go-forward.
“We didn’t have any game plan to take him out or target him, but I think we probably done a good job on him.”