Wests Tigers rubgy league star Benji Marshall has been charged with assault following dust-up outside a fast-food outlet in Sydney’s CBD in the early hours of Saturday morning.

Marshall is alleged to have hit a 24-year-old in retaliation for calling Marshall a “black c**t” repeatedly along with other terms of endearment.

It was only a matter of time before the ‘curse of the face’ struck down the New Zealand captain. The NRL has a knack in recent seasons of picking ‘star players’ to be the ‘face’ of the season launch, only for them to do something dumb.

Benji’s mistake was to find himself in the Rocks at 3.20 in the morning. It is fair to say that at that time of day one does not find assembled the cream of new South Wales intelligentsia.

A drunk git, 24, showing off to his assembled ‘dumb and dumber’ mates spots Marshall and decides to make a name for himself by taunting Marshall.

Benji has probably had a few as well, because in the early hours in Sydney they set up checkpoints to catch the sober drivers.

Anyway Benji does not like ‘drunk gits’ take on race relations and Benji’s origins so he strolls over and whacks him.

Drunk git then runs off crying to the police station and screams “someone famous just hit me and I was just minding my own business”.

The cops start doing their job slowly, and just when it looks like they are building up the suspense to fever pitch and bringing Benji in for a publicity laden chat on Monday – in strolls Benji.

Marshall was charged with assault occassioning actual bodily harm after being interviewed by detectives at North Sydney Police Station on Sunday afternoon.

Here are the police quotes on their discussions with Benji – ‘‘A 26-year-old man attended North Sydney Police Station in the company of a legal representative,’’ a police spokesperson said (spin doctor in a uniform).

‘‘He was questioned and issued a future court appearance notice for the offence of assault occasioning actual bodily harm.

‘‘He will appear in Downing Centre Local court on April 20.’’

‘‘We can’t escape the fact that the game does not need to be dealing with an issue such as this at such an important time of year,’’ NRL chief executive David Gallop said in a statement. No that is right David, the NRL should be dealing with the ever growing stench of betting corruption, instead of hand wringing over Benji slapping a moron who was asking for it.

It was dumb of Benji to put himself in the position to receive a drunken race relations lecture. It was also dumb of Benji to hit ‘drunk git’ only once.