The Roosters remain adamant that Spencer Leniu is not racist, but that didn’t stop the NRL from sending a clear message with the prop suspended for eight games for calling Broncos five-eighth Ezra Mam a ‘monkey’ during the game in Las Vegas.
Leniu repeatedly said he did not think the comment was racial, but that did not stop the NRL handing him a hefty ban in the biggest hearing since Billy Slater’s case in the grand final week six years ago.
‘We accept supensionin eight weeks, but in relation to the hearing the club stands behind Spencer and is firmly convinced that he is not a racist, said Roosters chief executive Joe Kelly afterwards.
Leniu is pictured arriving at the court hearing with Roosters coach Trent Robinson. Soon after, he was hit with the biggest suspension handed down by the NRL in six years
Ezra Mam (pictured) sent a 12-paragraph statement to the hearing – with eight of those paragraphs kept secret
‘The club remains strong in its position that Spencer did not use the word – the subject of tonight’s hearing – in a racially derogatory way.
“To be clear, the club does not believe that Spencer shot Ezra in a racially motivated manner.”
It has been the biggest talking point in rugby league over the past week with current players backing Mam and calling for a monster sending off for an incident that left him confused and unable to focus for the final 11 minutes of the game.
The Broncos star made an official on-field complaint to referee Adam Gee after he was abused for telling his teammates to run at Leniu, who he thought was going to be gassed after making the previous tackle.
Mam did not attend the hearing, but sent a 12-paragraph statement, the last eight paragraphs of which remained confidential.
“I saw him at the marker and remember saying words to the effect of ‘run it back to Spencer,'” the affidavit read.
Then I remember Spencer saying ‘f—up you monkey’. I felt so angry and disappointed about the incident and from that point on my focus was no longer on the game.’
Mam wasted no time reporting Lenius’ slander to officials as the Broncos took on the Roosters in Las Vegas (pictured)
Leniu admitted last week that he made the comment but was adamant that it was not racist and that he had been called ‘monkey’ and ‘coconut’ in the past but had taken no offence.
‘I heard Ezra Mam say something to me. That’s when I said to him ‘f—up, monkey’,” Leniu told the panel, with the star recruit set to return the week after his side play Brisbane for the second time.
‘I’m so sorry I used that word and I made him feel a bit.
‘This game happens so fast. In that split second I said a word that I didn’t know the meaning of. I didn’t know how much it meant to the indigenous community, Ezra and his family.
“I thought it was teasing.”
Leniu came under fire for comments to Triple M straight after the game when he said it was all ‘fun and games’, which led to Broncos players confronting him in the hotel that night.
‘I didn’t think I did anything wrong and that’s why I said it. I thought it was a brown man sledding another brown man,’ he explained, telling the panel he said ‘check me out’ to Broncos lock Patrick Carrigan that night.
Leniu (pictured in a confrontation with Brisbane’s Kotoni Staggs during the Vegas match) told the judiciary he had no idea the slur was offensive until he was told by an Indigenous woman the day after he used the term
The Roosters enforcer (pictured returning to Sydney from the US) offered to meet Mam face to face to clear the air but was rebuffed
‘There is no place for racism in this game. I’m glad he brought this up. I had no racial intent towards Ezra and society. I love them and their culture. I don’t think there would be a game without those people.’
Leniu told defense barrister James McLeod that he took ‘100 per cent responsibility’ and would ‘never’ use the remark again, insisting he did not know Mam’s background when he made the comment.
The Roosters prop found out just how offensive the spell was the following day at around 5pm. 06:00 when an elderly Aboriginal woman sent him the definition of ‘monkey’ and how culturally insensitive the term was.
“That’s when I realized,” Leniu said.
That’s why Leniu wanted to fly to Brisbane for a face-to-face chat and apologize to the Broncos five-eighth, who rejected the offer because he wasn’t ready to confront the Samoan forward.
Several football stars voiced their support for Mam after the apology was made public, including his Broncos teammate Reece Walsh, who posted the above message to Instagram
“If I had my way in a perfect world, I would have preferred to say sorry to him in person,” he said.
‘I would have flown to Brisbane and said it to his face without anyone else knowing.
‘I have no worries about him saying no to me because I understand what he’s going through. Hopefully down the line without anyone knowing I can see him in person and say I’m sorry.’
NRL adviser Lachlan Gyles – who repeatedly called Leniu ‘Luai’ in opening remarks and suggested he was Tongan – referred to the abuse suffered by AFL legend Adam Goodes in 2013 and accused Leniu of lying that he didn’t realize how offensive the term was.
Gyles said it was racist abuse of a ‘very offensive nature’ and called for eight matches given the significant impact it had on Mam and his family, while McLeod pushed for four matches as his client was remorseful and adamant , that it was not meant to be racist.
He also pointed to Marcelo Montoya’s four-match ban from 2022 for a homophobic remark and urged the panel to consider a similar suspension.
Souths star Latrell Mitchell (pictured) said the NRL ‘better deal with this s**t’ as the Roosters enforcer’s veil came to light
But after a 90-minute hearing and 40 minutes of deliberation, the panel of Bob Lindner, Sean Hampstead and presiding judge Geoffrey Bellew landed on eight games, meaning he will return in round 10 for the Warriors game.
“That puts it in the middle category of adversarial behavior,” he said.
“He was real, he was honest in his very bad use of a word, but not a word that was made out of racial intent.
‘He made a really bad mistake, one that has caused pain and hurt, but it was not motivated by race.’
He also later took up the example of Warriors winger Marcelo Montoya, who received a four-week ban for a homophobic slur in 2022, to which Gyles in turn argued there was no suggestion the player on the receiving end of those remarks was ‘offended by the comment ‘.
‘The submission that a race remark came from a dark-skinned person, makes it less significant, is wrong,” Gyles added, later declaring this an “opportunity to draw a line in the sand”.