An uncomfortable sense of deja vu...

This week's top sporting headline sees yet another footballer embroiled in a case of assault.

The perp this time is Cronulla player Greg Bird, who has allegedly glassed his girlfriend in the face, leaving her in hospital and waiting to have surgery on her eye-socket.

If this isn't bad enough, he's also colluded with his manager and solicitor to pin it on his so-called 'friend', Brent 'Patsy' Watson.

I barely know where to begin with pointing out what is wrong with this picture. A word of advice to Brent Watson first...

Brent - a man who commits a violent crime against his girlfriend, and then attempts to get you to take the rap for it and cop a criminal record in the process, is not a friend or a mate. The correct word for a person in your life who does this is 'arsehole.' And if you help him out of this one, you're perpetuating the idea that Greg getting to play sport next weekend is more important than the fact he committed a violent crime.

I'm also disgusted by the efforts of people around Bird to help him weasel his way out of this. Where the hell are people's priorities? One would think that more effort to make sure his (hopefully about to be ex) partner has somewhere to go and appropriate support at this time would take more importance than helping a criminal wriggle off the hook.

I know I'm living in a dream world here. Not a single footballer has done jail time over the last decade, despite all the various assaults and acts of thuggery they've been implicated in. I would love to see the legal system prove me wrong, but I doubt that anything is going to change in this case. What's more, statistics would indicate that the first thing Ms Milligan will do when being discharged from hospital is run straight back to Bird in order to try and 'sort things out.'

I don't have anything particularly bad to say about football players as individuals. I work out at the same gym as half the Carlton AFL team, and although they are predictably noisy and boisterous, and swear a blue streak when talking between themselves, they are always unfailingly polite to me. But when a football code closes ranks in order to protect one fucktard in the group, it only helps them get away with it.

Bullshit.