SOUTH Sydney chief executive Shane Richardson has vowed to ban for life the fan who yesterday threw a metal socket at Manly centre Steve Matai - an incident that overshadowed the club producing one of the upsets of the year.
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The Rabbitohs defeated the Sea Eagles 40-32 to almost certainly crush Manly's minor premiership aspirations.
However, their celebrations were short-lived as officials spent the post-match period searching for the club member who threw the object at Matai as the Kiwi walked up the tunnel after being sin-binned before half-time.
The socket - the size of a 5¢ coin - flew past Matai as well as two Manly officials who were ushering him into the dressing room.
NRL officials were speculating last night the piece of metal was part of ANZ Stadium and not brought into the ground.
Both Manly officials reported the incident immediately, with Manly trainer Simon Keith saying the object narrowly missed him and Matai but was clearly aimed at the latter. "It missed me by 30centimetres," Keith said.
"Not too close, but enough to think, 'What's going on?' The sad thing is it came from the South Sydney members areas. They're supporters of the game. What hope have we all got?
"There's plenty of rivalry but you don't expect that."
Matai was sin-binned with three minutes remaining in the first half for a professional foul after laying on Souths halfback Chris Sandow.
Sandow had been brought down just metres from the line by fullback Brett Stewart, who gave away more than 10metres start on the halfback. Sandow had taken an intercept from Matt Orford at the other end of the field.
Souths fans reacted angrily to his attempts to slow play down even further with a walk from the field of play which took an eternity.
"He [Matai] was walking towards us and a piece of metal came flying over," Keith said. "He turned around and I asked him to keep walking.
"We didn't need any more confrontation."
Police were studying CCTV footage during the game, while Richardson was trying to pinpoint the identity of the person by speaking with members after full-time.
"We'll go through the video cameras, we'll also be talking to the members…we'll find out who it was," he said.
"That's not the sort of person we want involved with our club, and as soon as we find out who it was we'll be barring him and going through the right procedures.
"But I want to make it clear that it's just not on, what he's done. From our point I apologise to the Manly club that the situation happened, and it's very disappointing.
"It's not the character of this club at all, and we'll make sure the person concerned is dealt with correctly."
Matai refused to comment on the incident, however, a teammate, second-rower Anthony Watmough, said: "The guy's a coward. What kind of person would take a potshot at someone when they're walking off the field?"
It is not the first time a Manly player has been the target for such an attack in recent times. In round 20 last year, Jamie Lyon had coins thrown at him at Parramatta Stadium after walking out on the Eels in 2004.
"We've been made aware of it, the authorities will handle it, that's all we can do at the moment," Manly coach Des Hasler said. "They'll conduct the investigation and handle it in the proper way, but if you're asking whether it's a concern, yes, it is a concern."
Manly spokesman Peter Peters said: "It didn't hit him in the eye. The fact that it didn't is probably the only piece of good fortune we had today."
