Greg Bird and his girlfriend Kate Milligan – before he smashed a glass in her face

It’s been a strange and sad few weeks for two well-known victims of domestic violence. Newspapers have reported that Greg Bird’s girlfriend has fled Australia and is moving in with him overseas where he has been forced to take his football career after being kicked out of the NRL. This happened because he smashed a glass into his girlfriend’s face and then tried to blame it on his mate. Rebecca Wilson wrote passionately about it on the weekend, saying:

GREG Bird’s story transcends football and sport. It is a tale of betrayal, violence and abuse. Greg Bird was found guilty in Sydney this week of recklessly wounding his girlfriend, Katie Milligan and of making a false statement afterwards. He will be sentenced in June, but still plans to continue his professional rugby league career somewhere in the world.

Milligan is holed up in Spain so she can be near Bird (how do these women forgive?). He was playing rugby league in France until he had to come home to face the court’s music.

When the magistrate handed down his verdict this week, Bird’s camp appeared to be absolutely gobsmacked that such a judgment could have been reached.Bird had told reporters the previous day that he and Milligan were still together. His body language, and that of his legal team’s, was very relaxed as the magistrate started to read out the verdict.That quickly changed.

Bird now faces an anxious six weeks until he is sentenced. A jail term looks likely given that Bird was found to have lied to police. In spite of all this, Bird believes his rugby league career will continue. He may have had his contract cancelled by the Cronulla Sharks but that won’t stop another club outside Sydney trying to have a crack at him.

Bird is a good rugby league player so that will probably be enough for him to earn another chance somewhere along the line. Morality and integrity count for nothing when you are a club looking for player flesh in professional football.

Greg Bird has proved he is a lowlife. He didn’t just glass his girlfriend. He ratted on a mate and was obviously willing to give him up for his own interests. This is the part of the story that should farewell any remaining mates Bird might have.A bloke who can do that to his partner and then to his flatmate deserves no friends, no future and no sympathy.

One idiotic former teammate said this week that Bird would be handed a State of Origin jersey if he had been allowed to play this year.That sadly is the calibre of many professional league players – they really believe being a good footballer excuses everything.

AFL star Ben Cousins has his shot at redemption because every piece of damage he did was to himself. He had no victims. Likewise Wendell Sailor.Bird, however, is a different story. He is the epitome of someone who apparently carries no guilt.

His abused girlfriend has forgiven him, so he believes that is the end of the story. We should all just mind our own business now.Bird’s future is firmly in the hands of the NRL. Once he is sentenced there will no doubt be an attempt by Bird’s management to have a contract issued somewhere in the league for 2010. Chief executive David Gallop can’t give that the green light.

To do that would be tacit approval of abuse and dishonesty. The NRL has a responsibility to its fans to set an example in the Bird case. The code has had its fair share of troublemakers in recent years but Bird tops the list. He is a bad egg who should never be given the privilege of playing elite sport again.

Gallop will be forced to make the call at the end of the season.He refused to register Bird for the 2009 season and left the rest open-ended because of the court proceedings.He knows the score now. Greg Bird should not play on a professional football field again.

Men like him deserve absolutely nothing, let alone a second chance to do something they love.

Wayne Cooper and his former partner, Sarah Marsh

And then there’s Wayne Cooper. Don’t even get me started on the fact that Wayne was chosen to appear on the COVER of Sunday Life magazine a couple of weeks ago where he was once again given media oxygen and a platform to deny the CONVICTION for COMMON ASSAULT against his de-facto wife was anything more than a ‘touch on the shoulder’. It’s a line he has trotted out repeatedly. But now, the victim of his assault has re-joined his publicity machine. Why? Why?

Amanda Meade writes in The Australian:

LAST November, a court found fashion designer Wayne Cooper guilty of common assault against his de facto wife Sarah Marsh, the mother of his two children. He was placed on a two-year good behaviour bond.Sydney’s Waverley Local Court heard Cooper repeatedly pushed Marsh at their beachside home in Tamarama while she was recovering from surgery for gall bladder cancer. Police said the fight at the couple’s home began as an argument about domestic finances.

Cooper also had convictions for common assault and malicious damage against a former business associate in 1995.But Cooper didn’t allow the bad publicity to get him down, and he has continued to appear on the celebrity and fashion circuit, and on the gossip pages.

He even managed to get acres of publicity for his show at Australian Fashion Week by inviting Marsh, their two children and his current girlfriend to sit in the front row.It was all the more bizarre given Marsh’s claims in a paid interview on A Current Affair last year that Cooper had brandished a kitchen knife and threatened to cut off her fingers.

In claims that were never tested in court, Marsh said Cooper hit her in the face and she “immediately tasted blood in my mouth”.So how did Seven’s Today Tonight approach its exclusive interview with Cooper?Very softly, of course; after all, this was an exclusive.

“Fashion King” was the segment by Sally Obermeder, a reporter who specialises in fashion and celebrity and putting herself into the action, and she didn’t disappoint in the piece about Cooper. The designer was “fighting to bounce back”, she said, as she allowed him to ramble on about being a “survivor” and a “straightforward” chap and to introduce us to his new girlfriend, an in-house model.

Today Tonight all but eulogised Cooper and failed to ask a single tough question about the assault.

The story ended with shots of Obermeder enjoying the front row at Cooper’s show, then squeezing him on the arm and saying: “Congratulations. Good on you.” Cut to host Matthew White in the TTTT studio who says “He’s back!”. Well done,you’ve rehabilitated Cooper.

This, in the week Kevin Rudd announces a national register of domestic and family violence orders because nearly one in three Australian women suffers physical violence in her lifetime.

Maybe I missed the interviews where Greg Bird or Wayne Cooper expressed regret for hitting their partners. Did I? Or is domestic abuse now just a minor speed bump on the road of sport and celebrity?