A court saw graphic video footage today of an "appalling" assault committed by a rugby league star and Iraq veteran.
Hull KR full-back Ben Cockayne, 25, pleaded guilty last July to assault causing actual bodily harm to Kiel Thompson in Normanton, West Yorkshire, in November 2007.
The part about him claiming that seeing his friend punched caused him to have a flashback to his time served in Iraq is nothing short of bull poo!
It's possibly the most common excuse used by veterans when they let their tempers get the better of them, and they end up in trouble. How long is it since he was in Iraq? A few years at least. I could understand it if he was still serving in the Army and had only just returned from theatre, but unless he's suffering from PTSD I honestly don't think that this "flashback" can be used as an excuse. Especially considering the amount of time that it is since he served over there. There's no mention of what Corps/regt etc that he was in. I wonder if he was frontline or not?
There are upwards of 50,000 British Army personnel involved in operations in war zones such as Afghanistan and Iraq, can you imagine the state the nation would be in if most of them started suffering "flashbacks" and started beating people up, on their return to these shores?
In no way am I making light of what our boys (and girls) are going through overseas and a lot of them will suffer after effects to some degree or another, but for a soldier to lay into a civilian in a street fight and then claim that he'd had a flashback, some years after he'd been on tour, is farcical IMO.
The RFL and clubs should take a tougher stance against these thugs that are creeping into our game. If they played over in the NRL they'd have probably been suspended until the court case and then either sacked or allowed to play on, depending on the outcome.
