Brisbane Broncos coach Wayne Bennett has called for a crackdown on stray knees after another Brisbane player was injured by an opposition knee in Brisbane's 53-0 demolition of the Newcastle Knights at Suncorp Stadium on Saturday night.
Brisbane second-row forward Alex Glenn went down early in the first half, becoming the third Brisbane player this season to suffer from an opposition player dropping their knees into a tackle, with centre James Roberts still carrying a hip injury from Round 5 when the same type of incident occurred.
Usually an 80-minute player, Glenn spent 24 minutes off the field receiving treatment on his hip flexor after Sione Mata'utia collected him with his knees in a painful tackle that could have been avoided, according to Bennett.
The Broncos mentor says, deliberate or not, players need to be penalised for using their knees to injure opposition.
"Alex copped a pretty bad knee. That's about the third one that's happened to us this year. I think game will have to start looking at some of that stuff," Bennett said.
"Your knee is a pretty lethal part of your body and if it's used in the wrong manor then it can have a huge impact.
"Some liability needs to be put on the player that comes in there and drops his knee so that he doesn't do something like that. As I said, it's the third incident we've had this year.
"They are getting away with it and they aren't getting charged for it. It will continue if that keeps happening.
"I'm not saying that it was deliberately done to Alex tonight, but I do think it could have been avoided. I think that's why we need to put some more pressure on the player to not drop their knee.
"We've done it with players putting unnecessary pressure on kickers and I think this should be look at as well."
The incident was the only blight on an almost perfect game for the Broncos, with Brisbane looking a class above as soon as the ball was kicked off.
They now sit top of the table and are deserved premiership favourites after keeping their opponents to nil for the second week in a row.
Statistically, Brisbane have the best defence in the league, conceding just 73 points in seven games.
The win even managed to get a smile out of Bennett who was much happier with his team this week after criticising their "disjointed" performance against St George Illawarra last round.
"I was pleased that we went on with it tonight. We were up 22-0 at half-time and we picked up more points in the second half so they obviously stayed at it. We didn't concede any tries so it was a really good win," he said.
"The opposition got a few injuries tonight and lost their way at times so that helped. I think because of that they failed to put us under the same amount of pressure that the Dragons did last week."
Brisbane will now host an out of form South Sydney Rabbitohs on Friday night, with the Broncos looking to make it five wins in a row.
