Football thuggery?

Just came across this horrific story on the BBC site, its about a football player called Neil Ruddock (see above) who claims that he deliberately broke the legs of an opponent in 1996. Many are calling for violence in the sport to have much harsher penalties, one commentator says "bans should be for weeks and months rather than days and matches", personally if this guy confesses to this act of thuggery and it's shown to be true then he should be locked up, like any other violent criminal. As for players who do similar things today then they should also be charged and convicted as if they'd committed the act on the high street rather than a football pitch, I can see no reason why the latter is somehow a special case; a life-time ban would be more appropriate IMO.