Getting a shot at redemption

Martin Hannan

The usual suspects: Football's gallery of reformed rogues includes such colourful characters as Diego Maradona, Kirk Broadfoot, Duncan Ferguson, Tony Adams and Joe McAlpine. Montage: Colin Heggie

THE vituperation heaped upon Graham Rix last week proved once again that famous footballers who end up in jail, or who are exposed in the media for the "crimes" of alcoholism, drug-taking and other addictions, must serve two sentences.

In football's bizarre morality, it is not enough to go behind bars or suffer the often worse penalty of having your face splashed all over the newspapers for your misdeeds. As Rix would testify, perhaps for the rest of your life you must suffer the permanently censorious judgments of that most cruel of judiciaries - the court of public opinion.

The football mob is unremittingly harsh when castigating a player's indiscretions. You may display full remorse, thole your assize and pay your debt to society, but on a Saturday afternoon there will still be thousands of people booing you and calling you "junkie" because you failed a drug test, "alkie" because you admitted to a drink problem, or "paedo" because you once went to bed with a 15-year-old for consensual sex.

You will never hear any terracing moralist say: "there but for the grace of God go I." That's not the part of the game, that's not what it's all about - for when you are shouting for your club, you do so in order to intimidate the opposition, and what better way than by picking on the perceived weaknesses of individuals, which are then exploited mercilessly?

It's nasty, it's brutish, it's football.

Yet football can also provide a redemption of sorts for players and managers who have transgressed.

A case in point is Kirk Broadfoot, St Mirren's hugely exciting young defender who has already been linked with a move to Rangers. Yet a year ago, Broadfoot was looking at a jail sentence after being convicted of assaulting a man from his Ayrshire village in an apparent long-running localised "dispute".

Fortunately, Broadfoot appeared in front of one of the nation's more sensible judges, Sheriff Jack McGowan at Ayr, who told the then 20-year-old: "I have thought very hard about sending you to prison. But you have good reports and you are rare in that you are a promising Scottish footballer.

"You can be a professional footballer or you can be the local hard man, it's up to you. I have seen my fair share of Ayrshire family feuds and you need to stay out of this one or you will go to prison."

He gave the player a chance, sentencing Broadfoot to 12 months' probation and 200 hours community service, and also ordering him to pay £750 compensation to his victim. Broadfoot reacted correctly to the warning - he now says he walks away from any hint of trouble off the field.

And on the pitch, Broadfoot has prospered and become an important part of St Mirren's revival, winning his first under-21 cap against Belarus and playing in the Bell's Cup victory over Hamilton Accies last week, though before that he needed a reminder - he was dropped - from manager Gus McPherson about the need to maintain his club discipline.

Joe McAlpine of Stenhousemuir did not escape prison. He served eight weeks of a four-month jail sentence for dangerous driving after his speeding car collided with a wall in Glasgow in October last year.

The crash almost killed McAlpine, who suffered a fractured skull and numerous other injuries, and was twice clinically dead before making a remarkable recovery. His partner, Debbie, and two other passengers were also injured.

Yet the day after he left Barlinnie, McAlpine made his debut for Stenhousemuir. McAlpine later confessed that he was worried how his fellow players would take to someone who was fresh out of prison, and he had wanted his sentence kept quiet, but manager Des McKeown felt it only right and proper to inform the squad.

It may have been gallows humour, but his colleagues immediately coined a new nickname for the full back - "porridge" - and his dressing room peg was decorated with a "reward - have you seen this man?" sign.

"That broke the ice and after that the boys couldn't have helped me more," said McAlpine. "It meant so much to come out of prison and get straight back to playing football."

With all due respect to St Mirren and Stenhousemuir, the more exalted status of Hearts has ensured Graham Rix a much more publicised trauma on his arrival in Scottish football.

It's yet another of football's double standards that while everyone is equal in the eyes of the law, the bigger your club, the more opprobrium football's sinners must suffer.

Duncan Ferguson is the most famous example of a Scottish player whose criminal activities were all too public. Convicted in 1995 of assaulting John McStay of Raith Rovers during a match the previous season, he became the first Scottish professional to be jailed for an on-field assault.

By the time of the court case, Ferguson had already moved to Everton in what appeared to be a bid to escape the goldfish bowl of Old Firm life. The Goodison Park club stood by him despite his 44 days in Barlinnie prison, and while his bad boy reputation has followed him to Newcastle United and back to Everton, there is no doubt that he is a hero on Merseyside.

It should help his cause that Ferguson has never spoken about his time in jail. Indeed he never gives press interviews, but a decade on, despite him denying the oxygen of publicity for his past, no-one has forgotten his notorious head butt on McStay. Such is the price of fame - or should that be infamy?

But Ferguson figures in perhaps the most curious form of redemption yet afforded to a errant footballer. Earlier this year, celebrated Finnish composer and Everton fan Osmo Tapio Raihala's latest musical symphony was performed for the first time. It is called Barlinnie Nine, in honour of Ferguson.

Other footballers find a way to reintegrate themselves into the sport and recover their lost reputations. Arguably, no-one in British football fell so far and so spectacularly in the 1990s as Tony Adams, former captain of England and Arsenal.

At the start of the decade Adams served 58 days in jail for crashing his car while under the influence of alcohol. He later fell down a flight of stairs at a nightclub while drunk and needed 29 stitches in a head wound. It took until 1996, however, for Adams to openly admit he had been in the grip of alcoholism for many years.

Adams once wrote quite mercilessly of his addiction: "I was self-destructing, yet in denial that I had a drinking problem.

"Sometimes I was still drunk from the night before while playing a match, especially when we played Sunday games. But the team was winning things, which masked it to some extent.

"As Arsenal captain, I lifted three Championship trophies, two FA Cups, two League Cups and the European Cup-Winners Cup.

"In the 1994/95 season, though, we finished about tenth in the league, which may have had something to do with the captain being down the pub all the time.

"Next season, I didn't play much due to injuries, which were not helped by the fact that I was spending more time in pubs than on the training pitch.

"I kept on passing boundaries that I'd set myself. I swore that if my wife left me I'd stop drinking. When she left me, though, I carried on. Then I promised myself that if I lost my kids, I'd stop - but I didn't."

But Adams did eventually stop, and has used his experience to found Sporting Chance, a charity providing support, counselling, treatment and aftercare to sportspeople who are suffering from alcoholism, drug abuse, compulsive gambling and eating disorders. Needless to say, most of its clients have been footballers.

Last week almost saw the ultimate in footballing redemption. It beggars belief that Diego Maradona, a cocaine addict who disgraced his country when failing drugs tests at the 1994 World Cup, and who was later convicted of shooting an air rifle at journalists, could even be considered as a potential coach for the national side. Yet Maradona confirmed that Argentina Football Association president Julio Grondona had discussed a possible position in the coaching staff alongside manager Jose Pekerman.

Now recovering from his addiction and looking well after a stomach operation dramatically reduced his weight, Maradona at last showed signs of maturity.

"I don't think it's the best moment to join the team," he told a radio station. "I want to make it clear that I don't want to get in anyone's way."

The millions of Argentinians who still revere the Hand of God accepted this verdict as the sign of the "new" sensible Diego. It is surely only a matter of time, however, before he gets that top job.

In football, it seems, some people will be forgiven anything, and Maradona's rehabilitation is due in part to his wondrous mastery of a football. Graham Rix would never claim to be in the Argentinian's league as a player, but like Maradona, surely he should be afforded the opportunity to redeem himself.

It may yet happen, but only after a long spell in the purgatory that the Hearts' technical area will become for him.

Taken from the Scotsman