I had the idea for doing this article a couple of weeks ago now, but bearing in mind that our next programme deadline was for the Oldham Athletic game, I thought it wise to hold it over until today. That despite Lee Hughes having left the Latics for the bright lights of Blackpool at the end of last month. So if you still haven't worked out what it is going to be about, then the topic is footballers who have been or are going to prison, a somewhat long list in which 800 words won't be enough to get all the jailbirds in. One of the latest men to join the chain gang being semi-pro footballer Lee Newman who was sentenced to four and a half years on the 4th of April for his involvement in a cocaine dealing ring. Newman, who played for Maidenhead United in the Conference South before his arrest, caught along with three friends with almost £28,000 of the Class A drug in their shared home. Cocaine wraps being discovered by the police all over the house, including eight grammes in a fishfinger box in the freezer, a variation on "cold turkey" perhaps. Former Leicester and Bradford City midfielder Jamie Lawrence, 39, who is currently in a player/coach role at Harrow Borough in the Ryman Premier League, was another footballer sentenced to four and a half years. With his crime being a bank robbery in 1990 when he was aged 20, Lawrence eventually serving 26 months in jail. The Battersea-born Jamaican international being initially spotted by Cowes Sports while playing for his Camp Hill prison side on the Isle of Wight. Sunderland then scouting Lawrence at Cowes, where he played under strict release terms, with then manager Terry Butcher giving him a one-year contract at Roker Park at the end of his jail term. Lawrence eventually making his debut for the Black Cats as a substitute against Middlesbrough at Ayresome Park, the music on the tannoy at the time in a classic "you couldn't make it up" being Elvis Presley's Jailhouse Rock as Lawrence warmed up on the touchlines. On the subject of music on the tannoy it brings back memories of another jailbird, although he wasn't actually a footballer, that being former Doncaster benefactor Ken Richardson. The major shareholder getting four years in 1999 for his part in hiring a former SAS soldier called Alan Kristiansen, who was working as a private investigator, to burn down Bellevue. Kristiansen perhaps not the best criminal you've ever heard of as he was arrested after police found his mobile phone at the ground. Richardson himself already in 1984 having been given a suspended prison sentence, fine and racing ban after being convicted of switching horses in a race at Leicester. The finest point of the whole tale though being Doncaster's first game after the sentencing of Richardson, Rovers winning 1-0 at league leaders Kettering in the Conference. The tannoy man at Rockingham Road introducing a track for "an absent Mr Richardson who couldn't be with us today", before playing Firestarter by The Prodigy. Back to footballers and we move up the sentence scale with former West Ham and Everton stalwart Mark Ward. The combative midfielder currently serving eight years for possessing cocaine with intent to supply. Ward, skint in 2005, accepting an offer from drug dealers to pay him a weekly wage if he rented a house in his name and handed the keys over to them. The end result being the police raiding it one day and finding £700,000 worth of cocaine, Ward pretty much then bang to rights with his name on the rental agreement. Going overseas and we find Nizar Trabelsi, a Tunisian ex-Fortuna Dusseldorf player who was sentenced to ten years in 2003 for links to al-Qa'ida. The trial of Trabelsi hearing that he, unlike the Americans, had met Osama Bin Laden several times in Afghanistan and had asked to become a suicide bomber. Trabelsi, 31 at the time, eventually being arrested in September 2001 for planning to blow up a military base in Belgium housing US soldiers, his arrest coming just two days after the attacks on the Twin Towers in New York. Finally we go to the United Arab Emirates and a case in which the verdict came just three weeks ago. It wasn't a good one either for Fayez Jomma, who once played for the UAE national team, his brother Mousa, and another footballer Mohammad Najeeb, the trio being sentenced to death, pending an appeal, for killing the victim, known only as J.J., with a sword and a knife. Jomma played for the gulf state's national team three years ago and both he and Najeeb played for Sharjah Football Club until the time of the killing near the victim's house in Sharjah. |