WARRINGTON Wolves chairman Stuart Middleton has been fined for comments he made about the season-ending suspension handed to prop Paul Vaughan.
The Rugby Football League have confirmed a £1,500 sanction for the Wire chairman – half of which is suspended until the end of next year – following an open letter he published in reaction to Vaughan being slapped with a four-match suspension.
In it, he expressed “profound astonishment” at the decision to charge Vaughan with Grade E “unacceptable contact” with St Helens forward Sione Mata’utia, whom he grabbed by the shirt collar as he rose to play-the-ball during the dying seconds of Saints’ 18-6 victory at The Halliwell Jones Stadium in September.
Despite Mata’utia affirming he was not injured during the incident and merely playing for time, the Operational Rules Tribunal handed Vaughan a suspension that ruled him out of the remainder of 2023.
However, Middleton has been found to be in breach of four Operational Rules after the letter was “found to have contained comments with a detrimental impact to the game and the Compliance function.”
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