When Jarrah Maksymow, the former Bacchus Marsh footballer, took a punt on getting a chunk of his jail sentence cut he might have thought he had a chance.

District Court judge Sean Grant has made clear such chances have come to an end.

Maksymow decried his 18-month term, but the higher court has seen a fairness in the Albury Local Court decision that the young man repeatedly failed to afford his frightened victim.

"Enough is enough," Judge Grant told him, on dismissing his appeal.

"Life is about rules. Not your rules."

For chances have been a theme of life these past few years for the faded Border football star that is Jarrah Michael Maksymow.

It's been in his reckoning that he could do what he wished to his ex-partner, that this violence and his frightening language wasn't so serious.

It was what he did and, despite being arrested and charged by police, he was never put inside; 212 days' bail refused, yes, but nothing full time.

Maksymow took these chances, and got some in return. Fronting court less than two years ago, magistrate Imad Abdul-Karim saw promise in the now 28-year-old.

It was a "turning point".

A jail sentence for assaulting his partner, albeit by way of an intensive corrections order served in the community, would keep Maksymow on a "continuing path" to rehabilitation and redemption.

But Maksymow was warned he could never again do what he did on the morning of September 8, 2018, at the victim's Springdale Heights home, when he slapped her face, leaving her with a blood nose, then took off to pull on the boots to play for Henty in a Hume League semi-final match.

But he did. Last November 27, he rang his ex-partner, the mother of their five-year-old son, "ranting and raving" before closing with the threat: "If you call the police I'll murder you."

A week later he again barged into her home, breaching an apprehended violence order a second time because he wanted to put up a Christmas tree with his son.

It was his right do so, his intimidating behaviour and words tried to enforce, and no court orders would get in his way. This terror revisited made the boy's mother flee the house and hide in her car, to call her own mum for help.

But, again, Maksymow's behavioural dye was cast. "It's got nothing to do with you ya gronk," he growled at the older woman. "Nothing comes between me and my family."

The court did though, locking him away in late January for 18 months with no chance of parole until the end of August, on the two breaches and an intimidation charge.

As magistrate Richard Funston sagely remarked: "It would have been absolutely terrifying for the victim."

Makysmow might have thought his appeal had merit, but the judicial consideration of the original sentence was even more damning of his criminality.

"You were a brutal thug," Judge Grant said.

"You humiliated your wife. You have abused any relationship of trust you had with her."

That theme of the repeat offender doing what he wanted ran strongly in Judge Grant's decision, as did the very reason why such a thing was so abhorrent.

Domestic violence, he told Maksymow, was a "blight on civilised society". The courts had to forcefully address the matter of general deterrence, he said, in a way that both denounced such crimes and protected the community.

The term imposed did just that, reflecting the courts' and the community's concern at the level of domestic violence perpetrated by men against women.

Judge Grant said Maksymow's sentence had to tell others "who may have impulses or inclination" to commit like offences "that they will meet severe punishment should they choose to offend".

"It is to operate as a powerful tool to prevent the commission of similar crimes."

The crux of the matter was, he said, laid bare in Maksymow's behaviour towards his victim.

"You were aggressive. You were physically stronger than she," he said.

"You knew there was no real prospect of spontaneous physical retaliation because of the disparity between you and her because of your strength."

Judge Grant said the court had an obligation to "vindicate the dignity" of each such victim in order to "express the community's disapproval of that offending".

But this went further in ensuring the sentence was able to provide the necessary degree of protection by the state "to the vulnerable against repetition of violence".

This all came down to that civilised society, he said, one anchored in rules.

"One of these rules is that men do not hit women. If you do so you lose the privilege to live in civilised society. Domestic violence will not be tolerated by the courts."

What had made Maksymow's offending so representative of uncivilised behaviour, he said, was in the way he thumbed his nose at the courts and the community.

"It's all about you," he told Maksymow, whose jailing was essential for everyone's protection.

"Thuggish, brutal conduct will not be tolerated."