The former head of the NRL's match review committee believes the league charged Jack Wighton with the wrong offence for his hit on the Wests Tigers' Joel Edwards.
Wighton was found not guilty at the NRL judiciary on Tuesday night, allowing him to face Cronulla in Saturday's qualifying final.
However the MRC's former chairman Greg McCallum said Wighton's hit made contact with Edwards' head, and should have been charged as such.
"I wouldn't have charged him with a shoulder charge, I would have charged him with dangerous contact or contact with the head," McCallum told Fairfax Media.
"Once they determined it was a shoulder charge, they had all sorts of problems trying to convince people it was. That came to a head (at the judiciary)."
McCallum also attacked the NRL's decision to have current chairman Michael Buettner justify the charge immediately after it was released, highlighting the differences between Wighton's hit and Ennis' from the same week, which wasn't cited.
"To me, they broke their own rule in doing it," he said.
"You've got a position where, once a charge has been laid, it was always imposed on me in the 10 years I was there not to make public comment about it because it would prejudice the case."
McCallum stepped down as the head of the MRC at the end of 2013.
