As rugby league player Tom Starling, torn shirt, bloodied face and concussed, paced his police cell, a veteran detective's phone started to ring.It was a Sunday morning in December 2020 and Detective Sergeant Kurt Hayward was at home."I received a few calls that an NRL player had been arrested by the local police," Hayward told Four Corners."I knew that it was going to cause a storm."Hayward, who spent 23 years in the NSW police, is speaking publicly about the Starling incident for the first time because he believes he witnessed a failure of the system to hold officers to account.Starling was arrested during a 21st party at the Shady Palms bar on the NSW Central Coast, when police responded to a confrontation between bar security and Starling and his family.Officers from the local police station and the riot squad alleged Starling and others had violently attacked them and that, during the melee, Starling had even tried to grab a detective's gun from his holster.Starling was released on Sunday morning from the Gosford police station You should be arresting people who do that, not doing it yourself," he said.Over the next two years, Starling fought the charges while trying to keep his NRL career on track."It was hard to show up sometimes, put that brave face on and pretend like it wasn't affecting me, but 100 per cent it was," he said."I was a young kid trying to live out my dream and I had this dark cloud just following me around everywhere."I used to go to games and just think everyone was thinking, 'Oh, there's that thug Tom Starling that assaulted police officers,' and did all those things that they said about me."In the end, like Hayward, Starling's persistence paid off