Storm star Nelson Asofa-Solomona ruled out of the NRL finals after a failure at the judiciary

Nelson Asofa-Solomona will miss Melbourne’s grand final showdown with Penrith after the Storm prop failed to overturn a four-match NRL ban.

Asofa-Solomona took a great roll of the dice on Monday, trying to reduce a careless high tackling attack from a grade three to a grade one.

Such downgrades are rarely successful, but it was the New Zealand international’s only chance to escape suspension for his goal on Sydney Roosters presenter Lindsay Collins in the opening stages of last Friday’s preliminary final.

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Collins was so dazed by the blow that he stood up and played the ball backwards. He did not return to the field under the NRL’s concussion protocols.

Melbourne spared no expense in clearing their colossal prop for Sunday’s grand final. They flew Asofa-Solomona and football manager Frank Ponissi to Monday’s hearing in Sydney and enlisted the help of Nick Ghabar.

Sydney lawyer Ghabar was the man who represented Billy Slater and secured the legendary former Storm fullback’s clearance to play in his farewell match in the 2018 grand final.

The start of the hearing was delayed by 40 minutes and when it finally started, the Roosters’ chief medical officer, Dr Matthew Morgan, was cross-examined by both Ghabar and NRL lawyer Lachlan Giles.

Morgan could not reveal whether Collins had passed his head injury assessment, but Ghabar was keen to highlight how the Roosters prop had shown concussion symptoms in 11 of his 113 games in the NRL.

Asofa-Solomona’s lawyer then turned his attention to a similarly high first-degree contact charge imposed on Queensland’s Valentine Holmes in State of Origin II in this year’s series.

Ghabar argued that Holmes’ hit on Payne Haas, unlike that of Asofa-Solomona, showed direct and forceful contact to the head without an attempt to wrap the arms.

But unlike Slater’s case, Ghabar wasn’t so lucky this time.

The panel of Bob Lindner and Paul Simpkins took less than 15 minutes to find Asofa-Solomona guilty of a grade three offense and uphold his suspension.

It means Sunday’s grand final will be the first of five matches for which the front rower is unavailable.

It is unclear whether the Storm prop will attempt to use test matches to count towards his suspension.

In the short term, Melbourne coach Craig Bellamy will have to find a replacement for Asofa-Solomona when he names his grand final team on Tuesday.

Six-game rookie Lazarus Vaalepu and Joe Chan were included in the Storm’s preliminary finals squad and appear the most likely options to fill in for Asofa-Solomona.