Really?
My recollection is that many were stunned by the audacity of the Tahs claim that Latu was scheduled to play in a club game.
Claiming it to be common practice,does not diminish the taint of cynicism over the episode.
You are normally good at citing examples to back up your POV, but not this time?
People were stunned because they have short and/or non-existent memories. Ian Prior's suspension included a bye counting as a match about a month before Latu's suspension.
Ian Prior was suspended last year and the bye counted as a match in 2015.
Owen Franks used a club game to count as one match of a two match suspension in 2015.
Ben McCalman was suspended for two weeks of which one club game counted as a match when they had a bye in 2013.
It seems that any time a team has argued that the player would have played club rugby during a bye week it is accepted and that counts as a week.
There are plenty of examples where the team hasn't seemed to argue that and the then the bye week doesn't count as a match (like Pocock in this example).
Clearly this should be cleared up so it is consistent and I think they should just make it so the bye counts as a match.
I don't understand why people view this as being so cynical. It's a subjective situation where there is uncertainty first over whether someone will be cited for what they did and then how the judiciary officer will grade it in terms of severity. There is then some uncertainty over whether they will apply extra weeks as a deterrent and/or subtract weeks for clean records and pleading guilty.
Why would you not try and achieve the best outcome possible for you and your team?