The unwelcome return of convicted rapist Ched Evans to the news bulletins reminds me, not that I need reminding, that footballers are not fit and proper persons to be treated as role models.
The Evans story always goes the same way now. A club wants to sign him, club ambassadors say they will remove support, sponsors will remove sponsorship (always the biggest worry to a football club), huge petitions take place opposing his return and finally the club decides not to sign him. I certainly don’t think anyone should sign him, certainly not for the foreseeable future anyway. Lest we forget, the man is, in the eyes of the law, a convicted rapist. It doesn’t whether some people have found bits and pieces on the internet that suggest the jury got it wrong. None of you were in court to hear all the evidence; the jury was.
Evans, whose loyal girlfriend’s father is buying the best legal minds money can get, is appealing the conviction but until then he remains a rapist. If, and it’s a big ‘if’, he wins the appeal, his actions, all admitted in court except the consensual bit, show him to be a pretty shallow, unpleasant individual. The man has shown no contrition and moreover has presented himself as the victim, not the poor girl who was raped and has had to move home and change address on a regular basis. No wonder so many women are scared half to death to report rape when they see the more sick elements of society line up to troll them if the court upholds the case.
The PFA, amongst others, trotted out the same old lines today about allowing a man to resume his profession once he has served his time, but hang on a minute: if Evans was, god forbid, a teacher, he wouldn’t be able to resume his job after raping someone.
I don’t look up to footballers full stop, like I did when I was a kid. Not when they routinely cheat, dive, abuse officials and then pocket obscene salaries thanks to people like, er, me, who pay them through our subscriptions to Rupert Murdoch. Or when we condemn a club like Forest Green Rovers who employ Lee Hughes and David Pipe, both former guests of HMP, but then turn up to watch them play and so pay their wages. We are all guilty I suppose, some more guilty than others.
I wouldn’t let Evans back into football at least until after his appeal and even then I’d never pay to watch him play. Until the appeal courts tell me something different, he’s a rapist and rapists don’t always walk straight back into their former careers after serving time.
