The Knights hit was neither a hot-blooded act, or a one-off incident. Plenty of players have punched an opponent in the heat of battle, and have not been reviled for it. What made this little mongrel the calculating dog that he was is that he used to file down his fingernails to points, and deliberately scratch and claw at his opponents to draw blood, then squeal to the umpires to send them off under the blood rule. Whether it was covering the body in rake marks or gouging under the eye of an opponent made no difference to Libba. Matty Knights was one of his favourite targets. Paul Kelly of the Swans was another. Every time we played the Dogs, he would go straight after Knighta with his claws.
This time the Tigers had enough, and not only hit back, but decided they would no longer protect the little dog under the players code of silence. That the Bulldogs tried to shift the sympathy of the footy public onto Libba by branding Wayne Campbell and Richmond "dobbers", says a lot about them as a club at the time. That Libba insists to this day that he wasn't a dirty player proves that he has all the self-awareness of a corn flake.
