North Queensland's Las Vegas hangover will extend well beyond their shock loss as Braidon Burns receives a two-match ban, while Tyson Frizell escapes suspension for the shot that injured Cowboys forward Thomas Mikaele.
After full-time in his side's 28-18 defeat, Cowboys coach Todd Payten was frustrated Newcastle veteran Frizell was not sin-binned for belatedly entering a tackle to hit Mikaele, who is set to miss six weeks with a medial cruciate ligament injury.
Chasing points, the Cowboys were then forced to play out the game with 12 men when winger Burns was sin-binned for his high shot on Knights fullback Kalyn Ponga.
On Monday morning, the match review committee handed Burns a grade-two charge, meaning he'll miss clashes against Wests Tigers and Gold Coast with an early gulity plea.
But Frizell can accept a $1000 fine and line up in the Knights' round-two clash against Manly.
Payten conceded Burns should've been sin-binned but felt Frizell deserved the same punishment.
"I can't disagree with the result. It was not intentional," he said of Burns' sin-binning.
"(But) really disappointed with how the Tom Mikaele incident was handled, considering Kalyn gets up and plays on, and Tom's out for the next six weeks. I'd just like a bit of consistency."
Robert Derby looks the likeliest man to slot into the Cowboys' backline after being listed on the bench for Vegas.
Frizell insisted after full-time that hurting big unit Mikaele had been an honest mistake.
"It's unfortunate, it's not something that you want to see happen to a player. There was no intent from me to be able to hurt him any sort of way. I hope he's all right," he said.
