Mam learns NRL ban length – and it’s shorter than you’d expect

Ezra Mam will miss the first nine rounds of the 2025 NRL season after being fined $850 for drug driving and driving without a licence. The ban will come into effect after Mam responds to the breach notice issued on Tuesday.

The nine-game ban, first reported by Joel Gould for AAP News today, comes after Mam was judged to have “engaged in conduct against the law and… brought the game and his club into disrepute.”

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The incident where all these punishments stemmed happened on October 18, when Mam – who was found guilty of drug driving – drove his Ford Ranger into an oncoming traffic lane and collided with an Uber. The crash resulted in injuries sustained by the Uber driver, Marcel Van Den Camp, as well as a passenger and her infant daughter.

The vitriol against Mam from the NRL world was fast and loud, with many believing the 21-year-old Brisbane Broncos five-eighth should be scrubbed out of the 2025 season entirely.

🚨🏉 Ezra Mam to be banned for nine games in 2025 (through to RD10) after being sent a breach notice by #NRL for "bringing the game and @BrisbaneBroncos into disrepute"

Was already fined $850 for drug driving and driving without a licence by the Brisbane courts

(via @AAPNews) pic.twitter.com/kZI4g5Xczw

— The Sporting Base – NRL (@BaseNrl) December 23, 2024

Mam has already apologised for the incident publicly, writing, “This incident isn’t a reflection of who I want to be (or) what is expected of me as a role model. To the NRL, the Brisbane Broncos, the fans and my family, I’m sorry. I promise to work on being a better person and representative of the club and the game that I love.”

With Mam benched through to the tenth round of the campaign – which marks Michael Maguire’s start to life as the Brisbane boss – it’s expected Ben Hunt, newly signed from the St George Illawarra Dragons, will deputise at five-eighth.

Hunt was signed on around $550,000 a year (after the NRL investigated the huge pay downgrade the veteran halfback was taking to move from the Dragons back to the Broncos) and shapes perfectly as a stopgap.

Mam will very likely take his place back no matter how Hunt, 34, plays. He has been one of the strongest parts of the Broncos rebuild in recent years, crowning solid 2022 and 2023 seasons with a hat-trick in the 2023 NRL grand final that Brisbane eventually lost to the Penrith Panthers in the final minutes of the decider.

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In court this month, Magistrate Mark Nolan gave Mam a verbal dressing down. He chastised the Broncos half for his “stupid decision” to drive unlicensed with a “cocktail of cocaine” and other drugs in his system.