Jackson said he had an anxious 36-hour wait before being cleared by the match review committee on Monday morning.

The Bulldogs player was placed on report for a tackle that "did not take the arm of his opponent outside the normal range of movement", according to the committee.

Any charge would have almost certainly rubbed Jackson out of the do-or-die clash against Penrith on Saturday night.

"No one goes out there and tries to do these things," Jackson said. "It was a bit of an awkward situation. Just the position he got put in, it could've looked bad.

"I don't think there was any type of movement that could have caused an injury. There was definitely a bit of a worry there. It's a pretty big game. You don't like to miss any games. I've moved on and it's a big game on Saturday night.

"It's not part of my game. It's something obviously that we don't practice. All I was trying to do was put him on his back. They got a penalty for it and it was probably warranted. Aside from that, it's probably over."

Jackson keeps his 63-consecutive-games record intact by being cleared. While the likes of fellow semi-finalists Aidan Guerra and Ben Te'o have been suspended for chicken-wing tackles in recent weeks, Jackson said he was not too familiar with the tackle.

"Until this week I haven't known a great deal about it," Jackson said. "It's not a good thing in the game to put people in a position where they can injure themselves. We don't practice anything like that here. All I was trying to do was put the guy on his back.

"It's obviously dangerous and not good for the game. People don't go out there and try and put people into those positions. All you're trying to do is tackle the bloke and get him to the ground, and in my case get him on his back to try and slow the play the ball down a little bit."

Coach Des Hasler played up Jackson's significance to his side. "He's had a good year, a stellar year," Hasler said. "He's gotten better and better. He's pretty important to what we do and I think the match review committee got it right."

Jackson found an unlikely ally in Starling, who publicly backed his adversary to escape a ban. This came despite the tackle prompting a melee between Starling and Jackson, which resulted in Starling being sin-binned for punching.

Jackson was happy to put the incident behind him.

"What happens on the field stays on the field," Jackson said. "I have no ill feelings towards him and hopefully he doesn't have any towards me. There was a bit of scuffle there. What happened, happened. I haven't watched the replay of that and don't really care about it. The game is over, I'm just looking forward."

Meanwhile, as Hasler and counterpart Ivan Cleary traded "favouritism" tag barbs when the two met earlier this week, Jackson confused himself when he discussed the Panthers' chances.

"They are definitely underdogs," Jackson said before being asked if he considered his team the favourites. "We don't see ourselves as favourites. They've been pretty consistent all year, whereas we've been pretty inconsistent and patchy."

Jackson then laughed when told he had declared the Panthers the underdogs but in the next breath said his team were not the favourites. "You've got me on a technicality. [That's] one of my best."