MORGAN Knowles will miss the next two Saints games after the Match Review Panel determined that his high shot on Halifax’s Tom Inman was a Grade C reckless high tackle.

The panel judged him purely on the action and not the immediate reaction from the Halifax payers running in or the social media response afterwards.

The minutes states Knowles “tried to tackle but was reckless about the outcome”. Mitigation will have come in the fact that Inman dipped immediately prior to contact and had he not Knowles would have flattened him completely legitimately.

But the way in which the Saints packman had raced and chased, at pace, into the collision meant that he was not in control of the outcome and it was an accident waiting to happen.

The groans were understandable given that the Cumbrian packman had only just returned from a five-match ban handed to him for the hip-drop tackle on Wigan’s Mike Cooper on Good Friday.

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But not just that, on the face of it the challenge was so unnecessary given the game was won and there was barely 30 seconds left on the clock.

There was, on the face of it, no need to chase so hard and aggressively given Saints were already in the hat for the quarter finals.

However, in his defence we don’t want to encourage players to clock off from their natural game too much when the game is done. It is certainly not in Knowles' nature to put the cue in the rack.

The team had become a little loose after going 26-0 up and that allowed the Championship side to score and enjoy a little more freedom to express themselves in the last quarter.

If you look at Knowles’ last two minutes in particular you saw a clever twist and turn offload from a hard carry and prior to the ill-fated challenge on Inman he had made the previous two tackles.

Sometimes the blood pumps a little too much in the heat of the battle – and that glint in his eye and adrenalin as he chased across from marker clearly over-rode any thought of the suspension he was coming back from.

Knowles plays the game with a physical intensity from start to finish and the tough edge that he brings to the game, particularly with a lot of the unseen 1 percenters, has been one of the key components of a team winning an unprecedented four Super League titles in a row.

There are occupational hazards in the role that he, and for that matter Matty Lees, plays in aggressively chasing, applying kick pressure and leading the line speed with intensity.

Players like Knowles are invaluable, just as someone like Jason Hooper was a key cog in helping that class of 2006 sweep all before it, but was on no opposing player’s Christmas card list – not least Lee Briers.

There have been times this past 15 years when the Saints pack has been accused of having a soft underbelly and being “too nice a team”, but that changed with the steel and toughness that Kristian Woolf instilled in them.

That does come with a cost with some of the same old faces on the MRP list on a regular basis for the last couple of years.

That is the big challenge for any coach, instructing and drilling the players to be aggressive and tough while making sure care is taken in making those contacts. And they will have to redouble their efforts on that score after the last couple of weeks.

Knowles is too valuable a player to be left kicking his heels on the sidelines - to say otherwise ignores his contribution of the past five years or so.

Although it would benefit nobody to have him walking on eggshells on his return – particularly against Wigan in three weeks’ time - if he is not careful his every action will be viewed through the prism of past misdemeanours and punished accordingly.

And that will be no good to anybody.