I don't think it's a case of defending him. I think it's a case of trying to treat the situation as an individual case. If it was a rovers player we would be on your forum stirring it with the biggest spoon possible but if we took a step back and took the fact he was a rovers player out of it then we would come to a sensible and reasoned conclusion....just maybe not publicly

I don't think anyone on here is defending him. Some are saying he should be sacked, some are saying he shouldn't, but no-one is defending him.

What will you say when it next happens to a Rovers player (and it will)?

Perhaps if you took your Dobbins glasses off and actually read what people are saying, you would see that most people are actually condemning him for what happened, rather than defending him.

And would you have started a thread on the Rovers forum comparing it to a Hull player being sin-binned in a derby?

Thought not.

Not condoning Crookes behaviour but I once witnessed a young drunken woman screaming and verbally abusing a guy in a pub and she then glassed him on the face, to which he responded by throwing his hands up to defend himself. He caught her in the face and guess who got arrested? More to this maybe?