Warriors coach Todd Payten has slammed the call to sin bin Jazz Tevaga on Sunday afternoon, stopping short of saying it cost his side a fairytale finals finish.

Referee Grant Atkins made the controversial call to give the Warriors’ lock a 10-minute spell after he appeared to strike out at Parramatta forward Nathan Brown in a tackle.

However, Payten explained Tevaga was trying to push the player off him, and Brown’s retaliation with a ‘questionable knee’ probably deserved a binning too.

“I thought it was the wrong call,” Payten said following the 24-18 loss in Gosford.

“Jazz had his jersey and he was trying to push him off. In the context of the game it’s huge and the wrong call in my opinion.

“If anything, the way Nathan Brown reacted they should have both been sent to the bin.

“Nathan’s come back in, I’m sure he didn’t punch but he had a questionable knee and we’re trying to stamp out retaliation so I don’t see why one goes and the other doesn’t.”

The call was even more costly with the Eels scoring two tries while Tevaga was binned, and the Warriors lost by six points.

It now makes their hopes of a finals fairytale virtually impossible.

“It had a big impact on the game… we had some chances to win the game,” Payten said.

“We scored a try in the second half which was some great skill again.

“We turned the ball over a couple of times coming out of our own end.

“They’re the things that cost us in the end.

“In the context of the game that put us under a heaps of pressure and you can say, we got beat by six points and leaked two tries in that period so it had an impact on it.”