Will he come back from this? (Jonathan Woodgate)

Member Name: dave27

Product:	Jonathan Woodgate
Date:	19/12/01 (179 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great talent

Disadvantages: A foolosh, foolish boy

What has infamously become known as the Leeds United Footballers Trial came to a conclusion on Friday, December 14 and there are few winners from the whole sorry episode as a long running association between football and alcohol in the peculiarly English way of life had another sorry chapter concluded.

Almost two years ago now, a long night's drinking in Leeds exploded into a full scale act of violence which has left all those involved regretting what happened. There are no winners here.

Lee Bowyer, Leeds' young midfield player, was celebrating his 23rd birthday with other players from the club and his team mate Jonathan Woodgate and a couple of his friends from home in Middlesbrough, Paul Clifford and Neale Caveney, were intent on getting riotously drunk on the night. They were all in the city's Majestyk nightclub.

Sarfraz Najeib was also in the club with his brother Shahzad and three friends, all students at Leeds Metropolitan University. When the students left they got involved in a verbal confrontation with one of the footballers' friends, who had just been ejected from the club. Woodgate and Bowyer had left the club at the same time.

Moments later Najeib was attacked in nearby Mill Hill and left unconscious in the street. He was bitten on the face and suffered a broken leg, nose and cheekbone.

Bowyer, Woodgate, Clifford and Caveney were charged with affray and causing grievous bodily harm. Tony Hackworth, a reserve striker, was also charged with GBH and Michael Duberry, a defender, faced charges of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.

(Affray is defined as "Intentionally using or threatening unlawful violence such as would cause a reasonable person to fear for his safety")

Matters came to a head in the trial in the first week of April as the jury were out considering their verdict. However, the Sunday Mirror of April 8 carried an inflammatory interview with the
father of the victim of the assault in which he repeated all sorts of accusations that there had been racial motivation. The following day, the judge presiding over the trial called a halt to proceedings when it was found that at least one member of the jury had seen the report over the weekend. He reasoned that a verdict would not have been safe in the circumstances and ordered that a retrial should be arranged for the following October.

Duberry and Hackworth had already been acquitted, but while the jury were out considering their verdicts on Woodgate, Bowyer and the others, a number of them saw the article in the Sunday Mirror. Mr Justice Poole, presiding said "It is, to put it mildly, not at all desirable that a crime and therefore a suspect, should be labelled racist when it is the prosecution submission they are no such thing. The whole misleading issue of a racial motivation which the prosecution and defence have sought to exorcise has been revived and placed before the jury in highly emotive terms." The judge said there was "a clear and substantial risk of prejudice raised by the article", adding that justice would not be served if the trial continued.

The judge ordered that a retrial would be arranged for the following October.

The retrial has now ended with Clifford found guilty of GBH and affray. Caveney and Woodgate were cleared of GBH, but found guilty of affray, and Bowyer was acquitted on both charges. Clifford was sentenced to six years in prison, while the other two received a sentence of 100 hours Community service.

Najeib and his father have now revealed that they intend to make a civil case against the men and Leeds United.

From the start of the first trial, Bowyer and Woodgate had been suspended from international matches, although they were available for club games. Woodgate, though, suffered mentally during the proceedings and was unable to appear.

Bowyer has now
been cleared to resume a potential England career, while a cloud still rests over Woodgate's whole future.

Leeds Chairman Peter Ridsdale was quoted after the verdicts as follows: "You can't quantify the damage that this has caused. None of us have wanted to go through this and despite the fact that we as a club were not on trial the mere fact that we are here today (answering questions) demonstrates that the two linked together and at the end of the day people have perceived Leeds United to be as responsible as anybody else. "But Leeds United have not been on trial. I would like to say that there is no hint of racism at this club and I was very happy to hear the judge in the case say that there were no racial motives in the attack. Leeds United has been in a very difficult position but we allowed both men to keep playing because we believe that they were innocent until proven guilty. The trial is now out of the way. We now want to go back to playing football and try to get back to some kind of normality. We recognise that all of our players are in the public spotlight. If they do anything deemed inappropriate we know they are made sure of the consequences of that. We will be taking internal disciplinary action against Jonathan. He's let a lot of people down. He has let himself, his family and this football club down and it's very important that he addresses what he has to do to restore confidence in him. He's in a very privileged position and he needs to respect that. We considered very carefully what we would do in certain circumstances and we do not take this (affray) lightly."

Manager David O'Leary was rather more forthcoming and the following article appeared in the News of the World.

DAVID O'LEARY last night launched a scathing attack on the FA for slapping an England ban on Lee Bowyer and Jonathan Woodgate.

Leeds boss O'Leary insists they were WRONG to axe his players when th
e pair were charged over the vicious attack on student Sarfraz Najeib.

He believes the FA would have acted differently for a player of the stature of David Beckham or Alan Shearer. O'Leary said: "The fact that they were not established internationals did for them. They were still names, but England had other players and it was a good PR exercise to me. They were expendable."

Bowyer could now win his first England cap against Holland in February after he was cleared of all charges. But FA chiefs have yet to make a decision over the future of Woodgate, who was found guilty of affray at Hull Crown Court on Friday.

In today's News of the World, O'Leary attacks Bowyer and Woodgate for lying to him over the attack and calls them a disgrace. But his blast at the FA is over the principle of the accused men being innocent until proven guilty - not a defence of his players.
The FA decided that neither Woodgate nor Bowyer would be picked for internationals after they were charged in connection with the attack on the Asian student - even though successive managers Kevin Keegan, Peter Taylor and Sven Goran Eriksson all wanted to select them. But O'Leary insists the court verdict vindicated Leeds' decision to continue selecting both players for matches - and believes the FA should have done the same. He said: "The players did not have to prove their innocence, it was up to a court to establish their guilt on the basis of the evidence. Fans nowadays are more fickle and impatient than ever, and the people who run football seem to feel they need to appease them. That appeared to be the reasoning behind the FA's announcement that Woodgate and Bowyer would not be selected by England. I was staggered. To me this was another act of political correctness and I couldn't help feeling it was an easy way out for them. If a player of the stature of David Beckham or Alan Shearer had been in a difficult situation, say b
efore they headed to Euro 2000, would they have been treated in the same way? I don't think they would have banned them from the European Championships, no way. They were too important. And if a court case involving a major player had dragged on like this, would he have been effectively left in limbo over the course of the three seasons? Of course he wouldn't. The Leeds Two were expendable. This was the New FA in action. There were elements of New Labour in the way it formed its policies. Adam Crozier and all them, it reminded me of New Labour at the time. It was what the PR machine thought, what would be good for them. The spin doctors were guiding those policies. I thought at the time that was a very good spin, if you like. It sounded good. They may say their decision has been vindicated as one has been found guilty of affray. And, be certain, this club would have acted if either had been convicted of GBH. But until that point they should have been treated as being innocent until proven guilty."


Clearly, feelings are running high on this matter and the reverberations will rumble on for some time to come. Alcohol has long had an unhealthy involvement in the game in England - witness the problems of Paul Gascoigne and Paul Merson and the prison sentence of Tony Adams for drink driving.

All that weight of history and an aura of shame have now descended upon Woodgate, who previously had a meteoric rise to the peak of his profession, in one season rising from the Leeds youth team to a full England cap.

He was invited for trials at Leeds and joined the club when he was 13, going on to play in the club's Youth Cup winning team in 1997. O'Leary gave Woodgate a run in the Leeds first team in 1998-99, after taking over from George Graham as manager. Woodgate was just 18 and he took to the top level like a duck to water, eventually going on to make his England debut in June 1999 in a vital European Championship
qualifying game away to Bulgaria. He had not yet played for the Under 21 side, although he went on to.

When Leeds paid £18 million for Rio Ferdinand, it was predicted by many that the two of them would go on to form a strong defensive partnership in the England side, but that was all before this damaging court case.

Woodgate has been in trouble with the law before, being guilty of a fight with a student, and has always pilloried by O'Leary for the company he kept back home in Middlesbrough. The manager has said now that a condition of him staying with Leeds is that he moves to the area and leaves his past behind him. He has certainly suffered from his association with Caveney and Clifford.

A promising career has been cut down in its tracks and only time will tell whether Woodgate will ever recover from this sorry episode.

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