NRL: Massive blow for Roosters, Souths as enforcers charged

South Sydney captain Sam Burgess will miss the first week of the NRL finals after he was hit with a contrary conduct charge for pulling the hair of Sydney Roosters winger Billy Smith.

Roosters prop Jared Waerea-Hargreaves has also been rubbed out for a week after his and Burgess' poor disciplinary records came back to haunt them.

Waerea-Hargreaves was charged with a grade-one high tackle for his shot on Souths prop Liam Knight in Thursday night's 16-10 loss.

Both players have copped one-game bans due to weighting and carry-over points.

They were both ineligible for fines because the pair already had two guilty charges this season.

Burgess controversially had a careless tackle charge downgraded at the judiciary last month and escaped with a fine.

But that incident means the Rabbitohs enforcer will miss a potential rematch against the Roosters next week.

The teams will meet in a qualifying final next weekend if Canberra lose to the Warriors on Saturday.

Waerea-Hargreaves is out because he took an early guilty plea to a dangerous contact charge in round 19.

While it can't be argued the Kiwi Test front-rower hit his opponent high on Thursday night, most of the damage was caused when Knight's head rebounded off Waerea-Hargreaves' arm and into Lindsay Collin's head.

"I don't know what (Waerea-Hargreaves) could have done, (his arm) wasn't clenched," Robinson said.

"It was a penalty, you can't hit the head. But I don't know what else he could have done.

"It was Lindsay's (head did most of the damage to Knight) and they both got split from it."