It's a penalty in soccer too if you go in with the legs and hit the player instead of the ball. And they did it twice. If hop doesn't get the ball down for his try would have been 2 penalty tries in 1 match which I've never seen before.
They were filthy dirty the eels in that match, and still lost hahahah. They are gone week 1 in the finals
Maybe the Hopoate one would have been a penalty try too (if he didn't get the ball down) but I think that's far from certain. To me it looked more like the defender tried to get his foot under the ball to stop Hopoate from grounding it rather than kicking at the ball or the hand etc.
IMO, the one from the little worm Moses was very different. The first and only contact was his boot on Meany's right forearm. Moses led with the boot and Meany dropped the ball because of the illegal contact from the boot.
The video ref had no doubt - he looked at it once before awarding the try.
It was an obvious penalty try.
Agree with you that Parrascums were very dirty in Thursday night's game and have no prospects of going anywhere in the finals. It's just a shame that they will even get to play 1 finals match. These days, it just doesn't feel right that Parramatta should play any finals football.