The morning after the sordid and repeatedly shameful saga of Oldham Athletic’s eagerness to snap up a bargain Ched Evans, there was not much sense that football’s establishment, all men, were resolving to learn some proper lessons. Gordon Taylor, chief executive of the Professional Footballers’ Association, a progressive voice on many causes over the years, was instead mired in embarrassment for his jarring reference to the Hillsborough families’ suffering to emphasise a point that Evans’s conviction could be overturned.
Taylor, who acted as the union representative supporting Evans’s keenness to play again, should have been reflecting on the outrage that prospect had been causing – including, clearly, to so many women. The PFA has not made clear this week its abhorrence of Evans’s and his footballer friend Clayton McDonald’s disgraceful conduct towards Evans’s then 19-year-old victim, on what Evans referred to, in his first semi-apology, as “that night in Rhyl”.
That young woman, whom Evans, right, and McDonald abandoned alone, naked and without possessions in a Premier Inn hotel room they had booked for themselves, is now, according to her father, living “life on the run”, having been serially hounded and unlawfully named on social media. Evans’s website, funded by his girlfriend’s father, Karl Massey, continues to vilify the victim and is under investigation by the Attorney General for whether it unlawfully identifies the woman. In a week of debate, few football men remembered to mention her plight.
Hull City’s manager, Steve Bruce, has become the latest to assume the position of a juror assessing evidence he never heard, to suggest the verdict might have been wrong. If Evans’s conviction is ultimately quashed by the Court of Appeal after its examination by the Criminal Cases Review Commission, it will not be on the basis that the jury got it wrong. Evans’s case must now be based on new evidence uncovered since, or which his lawyers may claim the prosecution did not disclose, or which was not heard in court. Even were he to succeed – the current success rate at the CCRC is 7% of reviewed cases – Evans does not dispute his actual behaviour that night, including the request to the girl the first moment he ever saw her that he “join in” with McDonald having sex with her.
The players’ union runs courses to advise young footballers about handling the public adulation and scrutiny, but here, where it went so horribly wrong, the PFA’s sense of duty has seemed only a rush to get their player a job once he is out of prison on licence.
Greg Dyke, the Football Association chairman, finally broke his silence, to clarify that the FA had no rules on the matter. That was accompanied by a vague promise that the FA will “consider and discuss the prospect for future guidelines or codes of conduct.”
The Football League also has its four independent directors considering “the implications for football’s reputation of clubs employing players following their release from prison”. Yet they started it only two months ago after Sheffield United finally capitulated to public pressure and did not usher Evans straight back into their shirt. He was convicted in April 2012, yet the league never thought to review the implications then, which reinforces the impression they thought it was fine for him to play for one of their clubs again the minute he was out.
Oldham Athletic’s grudging statement attempted to pin the blame on alleged “vile and abusive threats, some including death threats” through the week, prompting Greater Manchester police to make it “explicitly clear” none have been reported to them. Evans even claimed Oldham sponsors promised to withdraw due to “mob rule” pressure , when in fact they wanted nothing to do with the rape conviction he carries with him.
Oldham’s board, Evans, Taylor, Dyke, the league’s board and its four independent directors – with the exception of one woman, Debbie Jevans – are all men. In the polarised debate on social media this week, the general impression coalesced that the majority of women appeared to be appalled by football’s preparedness to have Evans claiming the cheers of fans again. Those emphasising his legal right to work above any objections seemed mostly to be men. There were almost no women claiming that what Evans had done was not all that bad, presuming to question the verdict or vilifying the victim, as some men repeatedly were.
That has left a disturbing after-taste to this vile affair: the feeling that men, football men particularly, are not fully understanding the abhorrence and fear women have of sexual abuse and exploitation, not quite as appalled by Evans’s conduct, as we should be. And football wants it both ways – clubs are community organisations and players role models when there is marketing to be done, but when justifying a contract for Evans, he is just a man plying a trade, and the game is just a business.
This sorry affair should be giving the national sport a great deal to think about. The men conducting these reviews should show some backbone, some semblance that they actually care, and get on with it.
