BOOS FOR HUGHES

20-08-2007

Former West Bromwich Albion striker Lee Hughes is released from prison today after serving only half his sentence for causing death by dangerous driving. Damien Doran, who supports his new club Oldham Athletic, ponders a fan's dilemma.

Back in the 1980's Channel 4 produced a brilliant comedy drama called Eleven men against Eleven. Starring Timothy West as a money grabbing, power mad Football Club Chairman, it was a sordid tale of corruption, match fixing, double dealing agents and overpaid out of control players.

James Bolam co-starred as the "jumpers for goalposts" old style youth team coach who is promoted to first team manager to save the club from relegation with three games to go.

Set in the early days of the Premier League, the play predicts moral decline in football today by contrasting Bolam's character, (parking his bicycle next to the players' Ferraris) with the corruption going on around him as one by one his players become embroiled in a variety of scandals.

You can still watch it on 4 on demand, it does however feel quite tame and dated when compared to the harsh realities of modern football with its regular court cases, strange cash and transfer deals and allegations of drugs, betting scandals and assaults on fellow team mates. It's a bit like an old fashioned Hammer Horror film compared to todays slasher movies.

It doesn't seem to matter what a person does, football will always welcome you providing you have the cash or can do the business on the pitch.

Just what would be beyond the pale for football and its fans? What would the reaction be if Al Qaida put together a consortium to buy a top Premiership brand, to break into that untapped Middle East market?

The club's fans would be telling us that any complaints were just jealousy because of the money available for new players. The FA would probably be saying they were only concerned with football matters.

And what of the players? What does your star player have to do before you don't want him representing your club? Certainly not missing drugs tests (Rio Ferdinand gets a pay rise), physical attacks on members of the public or fellow team mates are certainly forgivable and there are a variety of excuses for any number of excesses by these highly prized assets.

A few games without a goal is a much bigger crime.

Easy for me to carp, but now I face such a dilemma as my club, Oldham Athletic, prepare to welcome Lee Hughes - released from prison today - as their new striker.

I am the first to believe in rehabilitation but it is the speed with which this deal was done, even before Hughes sentence is completed which makes me feel very uncomfortable. In what other business would this happen?

Would it be have been better for there was a period of time in which Hughes did, say, community work before making such a high profile return? But Hughes is 31 and doesn't have much time, and Latics need to push for promotion and if they weren't in for him someone else would surely beat them to it.

Naturally this will be given a lot of local media coverage and many will say Hughes shouldn't play again but I don't remember Albion fans complaining when he continued to bang in the goals to help gain promotion after the car crash but before his conviction for causing death by dangerous driving.

At that time, given the nature of the allegations surrounding the incident, particularly Hughes running away from the scene, shouldn't Albion have allowed him to concentrate on his pending court case and continued to have paid his full salary until the conviction?

It will not be an easy time for Hughes, or I suspect my team.