Canberra's Hudson Young is facing up to seven weeks on the sidelines after being charged by the NRL match review committee with an alleged eye gouge on Canterbury's Aiden Tolman.
The rookie Raiders forward will be suspended for five weeks if he accepts an early guilty plea to a grade-three dangerous contact - head/neck charge.
He risks spending seven weeks on the sidelines if he fights the charge at the judiciary and loses.
The 20-year-old was charged for a first-half incident in which his hand made contact with the Bulldogs prop's face.
Tolman reeled out of the tackle, clutching at his eye and complained to the on-field referees.
"I asked Hudson what it was. And he put his hand on his face did he? I don't know," Raiders coach Ricky Stuart said after the match.
Young found a supporter in Cronulla veteran Paul Gallen, who believes the second-rower has been treated harshly.
"I didn't think he'd get that much, to be honest. I thought that he'd be charged for it, I thought he might cop a week or two," Gallen said on the Sunday Footy Show.
"There's no doubt that he's attacked the face there, but his knee gets in the way. You can't actually see exactly what he's done.
"I thought it would be a dangerous contact, some sort of charge that might get him two or three weeks. But seven weeks is a big charge.
"The trouble is, he did it on Aiden Tolman. Aiden Tolman's a tough front-rower, but he's also one of the nicest front-rowers in the game.
"Had he done it on me or Andrew Fifita, it probably would have been our fault! Aiden Tolman, he doesn't stay down, he doesn't blow up at anything - and he blew up straight away and said he got eye-gouged.
"It obviously doesn't matter if Aiden Tolman wants to go on with it [or not]. We've seen earlier in this season, Josh McGuire did something similar, the player didn't want to go on with it, so I think he was given a fine and that was it."
Earlier in the year, North Queensland forward McGuire escaped scrutiny for an alleged eye gouge on Cameron Munster after the Melbourne five-eighth declined to make an on-field complaint.
McGuire was charged with contrary conduct and escaped with a $3350 fine.
South Sydney prop George Burgess also missed the opening three games of the NRL season and one Test after being found guilty of an eye-gouge on Dallin Watene-Zelezniak last year.
