/ 17 June 2005

Bowyer has already paid

It is a pity Lee Bowyer is keeping his thoughts to himself at the moment because his views on the English justice system could only be interesting.

The Newcastle midfielder may not be the most likeable or intelligent of footballers, and may even deserve the ”toerag” epithet bestowed upon him by a former international player-turned-pundit. He has turned out to be something of a serial offender since his first brushes with public notoriety while at Charlton, but it should be remembered he was found not guilty in the court case that has become central to his reputation, when charged with intent to do grievious bodily harm and affray in connection with an assault on a student outside a Leeds nightclub.

That needs to be said because some influential sections of the press ignored the verdicts and proceeded to damn Bowyer anyway. To them he was, as some admittedly unsavoury incidents from his past could be endlessly recycled to prove, a nasty piece of work who should never be allowed to play for England.

When that prospect arose and Sven-Goran Eriksson gave Bowyer the briefest of chances to prove his worth before last year’s European Championship, the press sat in judgement of him again, recalling his list of misdemeanours with relish. It was as if the jury at Hull Crown Court had somehow made a mistake, or allowed the slippery Bowyer to wriggle through a legal loophole. Yet the biggest mistake in the overlong and overblown saga of that court case was made by the press itself, when an impatiently reckless article in the Sunday Mirror led to a retrial.

So that, Bowyer must think, is what happens when you are found innocent. What happens when you are found guilty, as he unquestionably was over the fist fight with Kieron Dyer on the pitch against Aston Villa in April, is that you have to make a public apology, accept a club fine of £228 000 and a further £30 000 from the Football Administration’s (FA) disciplinary committee, and serve a seven-match suspension. And then you get a letter from the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).

There is no need to list here all the other things the CPS could be doing with its time, such as looking at rather more serious assaults in rugby union and horse racing or, heaven forbid, tackling crime that isn’t covered on television from a dozen different camera angles. The question to be asked, surely, is whether the CPS understands the concept of justice.

Simply through having the misfortune to be a professional footballer, Bowyer has just been relieved of a quarter of a million quid for an ”offence” that most police officers would walk straight past without stopping on a street corner on a Saturday night. Scrapping with a team-mate on the pitch might be a big deal in football terms, hence the hefty fine, but Bowyer offended the game’s delicate sensibilities rather than public order. Dyer was barely marked and has not complained.

The prosecution was launched only on the questionable basis that some unnamed spectators expressed ”concerns”.

Were the police to adopt that level of violence and that amount of injury as a threshold for criminal action, they would soon find themselves staking out every pub car park in the country, not to mention trawling the nation’s playgrounds keeping an eye open for Chinese burns. And were all such minor miscreants brought before a magistrate, they could expect warnings or small fines. Nothing in the region of £258 000.

The fact that Bowyer can fairly easily afford such a sum is neither here nor there. He can afford it because he is a Premiership footballer and it is because he is a Premiership footballer that he has come to the attention of the CPS. That is what is known as a vicious circle to most people. Within the CPS and Northumbria Police it probably looks more like an easy target. The player has already pleaded guilty, for goodness’ sake, and, more to the point, has taken his punishment without demur.

At least he thought he had. What the CPS hopes to add is unclear. Sportsmen (and women) should not be above the law, but they should be exempt from being penalised twice just because the footage is so freely available. If the police want to take a view on what happens on the football field, they should make their opinion known straight away, as would happen on the street. They do not need to be handcuffing dismissed players as they make their way down the tunnel, but for the sake of credibility they need to be making charges before the FA get round to formulating theirs.

Bowyer has already paid the footballing price, the one with all the noughts on the end, so all that can fairly be thrown at him now is what any other young hothead could expect for squaring up to his mate for five seconds in a public place and not causing him any lasting damage. Talk of prison is surely vindictive — depressingly, it is not quite laughable — but vindictive is what Bowyer has come to expect.

And he, better than anyone else, knows that if the prosecution goes ahead it will be long, expensive and pointless. Because this is English justice, after all.

There used to be a game in there somewhere.

It was Keith Burkinshaw who once looked back at Spurs and ruefully remarked: ”There used to be a football club there.” Anyone surveying another week of financially motivated Premiership madness might have been moved to a similar conclusion, that there was once a national sport in there somewhere.

Ashley Cole swears he could never join another Premiership club after the very hearing where he is found guilty of holding talks with Chelsea. Harry Kewell, shocked by criticism from Gary Lineker, admits to a libel court that he knew nothing of the contentious payment of £2-million to his agent, Bernie Mandic.

Burkinshaw’s old club throws a hissy fit at Chelsea poaching their sporting director, then soften their tone if Scott Parker can be included in the compensation package, while other Premiership clubs pressurise them to complain to the FA in the hope of invoking Chelsea’s points deduction.

Best of all, Uefa’s decision to let the holders into next season’s Champions League is warmly greeted everywhere, except among the four English clubs already in the competition, who will now receive a fifth of television money rather than a quarter. ”I have no problem with the holders defending the trophy,” says Everton chief executive Keith Wyness. ”But it should be at no financial expense to any of the other clubs in the competition.”

Sport, eh? Who needs games when all this is going on? But everyone needs rest and the footballers have delighted us for long enough. Give the cricket season a chance. Please. — Â