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“Outrageous”: Alexander fumes over "stupid" To'o sin bin
Nicholas Quinlan • May 29th, 2025 12:21 pm
Greg Alexander has doubled down on his view about NSW’s Brian To’o being sin-binned during Game I of the Men’s State of Origin series calling the decision “outrageous”.
At the stroke of half-time, To’o was deemed to have professionally fouled Xavier Coates in NSW’s 18-6 victory over Queensland by trying to tackle the winger mid-air and not make a true attempt at catching the ball.
This would see To’o sin-binned for 10 minutes alongside the Maroons being given a shot at a penalty goal that Valentine Holmes scored. Queensland also managed to score a try during the period that he was off which brought Queensland back into the game.
On Fox League’s coverage, Alexander did not hold back on his opinion on the decision calling it one of the worst decisions he has seen.
“That will go down as the worst (decision in Origin history I’ve seen),” he said.
“We really need to do something about this rule. That is outrageous. That is ridiculous. It is the worst thing I have ever seen.
“He (To’o) gets monstered by a taller player. What else can he do? He has eyes only on the ball.”
On SEN 1170’s Breakfast, he would continue to maintain his rage about the incident and the mid-air tackle rule using the example of Brisbane’s Jesse Arthars and St George’s Tyrell Sloan from Round 11.
“We spoke about this a couple of weeks ago with Tyrell Sloan and Jesse Arthars,” Alexander would explain.
“Both are competing for the ball, Jesse Arthars puts his hands on Tyrell Sloan. Now, when you are competing for the ball…when we discussed that incident Sloan and Arthars, we had people saying, ‘Oh yeah, but he put his arms around him’.
“That is in slow motion. Like in slow motion, everything looks bad. It looks like you have actually thought about what you’re doing, which is not true.
“When you both go up and To’o is…well he’s outgunned by Xavier Coates by half a foot and then he got above him.
“To’o went up as good as he could but got monstered by Coates. Coates plays at the ball. To’o with his arms up, trying to catch the ball, then makes contact with Coates’ body.
“You’re in the in-goal area. How do you get sin-binned for that?”
Alexander would then take further aim at the rule believing that the game only has itself to blame for this decision.
“They have worked their way to the situation we find ourselves in. It was taking the legs from a player, that was the dangerous (part). You can’t tackle a player in mid-air, it’s too dangerous,” Alexander said.
“This isn’t a tackle. This is a player making contact with another player while he is trying to catch the ball and then on the way down, he grabs him.
"That’s not a tackle in mid-air. Particularly in the in-goal area.
"Does he need to then pull his arms away? You can't do that in a split second. You can't do that."
