FOR Kamilaroi man Randall Briggs, playing in the NSW Koori Knockout with a host of his relatives each year means just about everything.
It's the biggest weekend on his family's calendar.
But the Central Newcastle forward wasn't able to play in the 50th version of the tournament in October due to a partly served two-game ban he received for a high shot in the Newcastle Rugby League finals series last season.
Briggs was hit with a three-match suspension for a careless high tackle, for which he was also sent off, but took an early guilty plea to reduce it to two weeks in the hope of playing in the grand final should his side have made it.
The Butcher Boys lost the next game and were knocked out, leaving Briggs with one game of his ban still to serve.
But due to NSWRL's current policy, he wasn't able to serve the ban in the Koori Knockout, where teams play up to six 40-minute matches over the long weekend.
The Newcastle All Blacks went on to win the knockout and as such, qualified to play the winner of the similar Queensland tournament, the Murri Carnival. They are set to face the Queensland winners, Erub United, in Beenleigh on Saturday.
But Briggs' suspension will prevent him from playing in the interstate showdown, and looks set to stop him playing for Newcastle Rugby League's representative side at the NSW Country Championships in March as well.
"It's like I've been suspended for a year, I've been punished for that long," Briggs told the Newcastle Herald.
"I'm lucky I'm as strong as I am because it's affected my mental health big time.
"I've had to miss out on all these tournaments, yet I've still got to serve my [one] match suspension back in the [Newcastle first-grade] competition.
"I'm just baffled how it works. It doesn't make sense. It's a joke."
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Briggs is not the first player to have been caught up in such a situation, but he hopes by highlighting his case he can force the governing body into change.
"It's the biggest weekend of the year for us, to be out there representing our people and community through our culture, and I wasn't able to play due to a one-game suspension, and there's five or six games," Briggs said of the Koori Knockout.
"We ended up winning it and I got to be a part of it through coaching, but I would have loved to be out there on the field with the boys as I'm the captain.
"I don't want anyone to go through the same situation. It's a whole separate competition, the Koori Knockout.
"Why can't we play in that? But if not, why doesn't that count to serve your ban?"
Briggs, via his club and Newcastle Rugby League, made submissions to the chair of NSWRL's independent judiciary tribunal to have knockout games count towards his suspension, but was knocked back.
"I was hoping I could sit out two games [in the knockout] and it counts for the one-game suspension," he said. "We fought for it. It went up and down, but it wasn't to be."
In response to questions from the Herald this week, the NSWRL said knockout carnivals did not count towards suspensions "because they are not full games".
"The game-wide approach (supported by the NRL) is that knockout games do not count to reduce suspensions incurred outside of the knockout," the state body said.
"There have been various suggestions over a period of time as to how this might be modified but none have been pursued to date."
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The NSWRL judiciary chair has also ruled Briggs out of representing the Newcastle Rebels before the local first-grade competition kicks off in March.
"It is my view that as a suspended player, he is ineligible to be selected in the Rebels Country Championship team," the chair wrote in an email ruling, seen by the Herald.
"Any games played by the Rebels team WILL NOT count towards his suspension."
In a similar example that shows the inconsistencies across the game, South Sydney winger Taane Milne was suspended for six matches at the end of last season but was able to use Fiji's four World Cup games and a pre-tournament trial as part of his ban.
Briggs said he was more than happy to serve the suspension he received, but was bewildered that he could not do so in the off-season fixtures, nor play in them.
"I just feel really, really hard done by," he said. "I like to be an honest man and accountable, and what I did was wrong - the head-high tackle. But it was the first time I had been sent-off, ever, in my life."
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