Andy Woodward/David White

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Finn Keane o' Balmaqueen

Finn Keane o' Balmaqueen

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https://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/nov/16/andy-woodward

Just a snippet...

Neil Warnock had taken over as manager and in November 1999 he told me he was going to Sheffield United. ‘I’m going to take you and [the goalkeeper] Paddy Kenny,’ he said, ‘you’re the only ones I want, my best two players.’ It was a chance for me to play for a bigger club, even though I loved it at Bury. I went shopping at Tesco that Sunday night and – boom – I don’t know what hit me. I genuinely thought I was going to collapse and die. My heart was racing. All the adrenaline had rushed to my head. I managed to get home, called an ambulance and went to hospital and they explained it was a panic attack.”
 



LYDON said:
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/nov/16/andy-woodward

Just a snippet...

Neil Warnock had taken over as manager and in November 1999 he told me he was going to Sheffield United. ‘I’m going to take you and [the goalkeeper] Paddy Kenny,’ he said, ‘you’re the only ones I want, my best two players.’ It was a chance for me to play for a bigger club, even though I loved it at Bury. I went shopping at Tesco that Sunday night and – boom – I don’t know what hit me. I genuinely thought I was going to collapse and die. My heart was racing. All the adrenaline had rushed to my head. I managed to get home, called an ambulance and went to hospital and they explained it was a panic attack.”
Click to expand...

Sobering reading. Poor fella. You look at stories like this and the multiple celebrity kiddy fiddling cases and wonder just how much people knew and did nothing.
 
Blade for Sale said:
Sobering reading. Poor fella. You look at stories like this and the multiple celebrity kiddy fiddling cases and wonder just how much people knew and did nothing.
Click to expand...

There was once a manager, who managed across the city.
He was the subject of an investigation into something similar.
Taken to court, he was found not guilty.

Thru' work, I was in Liverpool for a while.
One of the associates I worked with was a relation to a lad who had struggled thru' life, but had found his happiness in football, albeit at a lower level than professional. A decent left winger too.

We talked about football and music and life.
We discussed who we supported. He mentioned April '89, that club .... then he fell silent, head bowed, began to weep.
Eventually, when he had stopped crying. He explained that when he was a child in the care-home system he had been abused.
It had left a mark on his life that he tried, but couldn't forgive/forget.
He had been to court to give testimony, but it was all in vain.
The accused had walked away 'not guilty' due to the fact 'that he had bought that verdict' ....

I don't need to go on.
 
Blimey...

Bennell, now 62, was jailed for two years in May 2015 for another historic case involving a 12-year-old boy in Macclesfield and admitted in a 2012 interview with the Sunday Times that Gary Speed was one of the youngsters who stayed at his house. Bennell told the newspaper he had not abused Speed, but added that even if he had done he would be unlikely to admit it anyway. When the reporter told him he would be left in peace, he replied: “There’s no peace now. How can you have peace when you’ve killed somebody?” He added: “To me, killing someone is what you’ve done to them, because their life’s never the same again.” Lawyers for Speed’s wife, Louise, subsequently put out a statement saying they had been assured that the former Wales manager was not one of Bennell’s victims.
Click to expand...

Absolutely awful and I hope being able to talk about it publicly goes some way towards getting him the closure he speaks of.
 
I have zero recollection of him as a player, but fair play to him for speaking so candidly.

The guy who committed these offences really is the lowest of the low.
 
Harrowing indeed. Great strength from him to come forward to give encouragement to others who have suffered.
 
LYDON said:
There was once a manager, who managed across the city.
He was the subject of an investigation into something similar.
Taken to court, he was found not guilty.

Thru' work, I was in Liverpool for a while.
One of the associates I worked with was a relation to a lad who had struggled thru' life, but had found his happiness in football, albeit at a lower level than professional. A decent left winger too.

We talked about football and music and life.
We discussed who we supported. He mentioned April '89, that club .... then he fell silent, head bowed, began to weep.
Eventually, when he had stopped crying. He explained that when he was a child in the care-home system he had been abused.
It had left a mark on his life that he tried, but couldn't forgive/forget.
He had been to court to give testimony, but it was all in vain.
The accused had walked away 'not guilty' due to the fact 'that he had bought that verdict' ....

I don't need to go on.
Click to expand...
I believe the investigations into abuse in North Wales Children's Homes have not yet been concluded. I read a couple of weeks ago that a senior police officer who had previously won a libel case against newspapers who had printed allegations against him, after he was found not guilty in a previous trial, has now been convicted. I will try to find the story and post a link.


Edit: https://www.google.co.uk/amp/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/37861254?client=safari
 
LYDON said:
There was once a manager, who managed across the city.
He was the subject of an investigation into something similar.
Taken to court, he was found not guilty.
Click to expand...

If I remember rightly.

I didn't think the trial reached any conclusion.
Their manager was very ill at the time and the case was dropped due to not enough evidence.

Their manager has said its was a massive cloud over his head as some still say there's no smoke without fire etc.
 
I saw this on the Guardian website earlier, and i was genuinely shocked by what i read. I barely remember Andy Woodward as a player, who just seemed to be one the players who would come in under Warnock and go after not making much impact,

I can vaguely remember hearing that that Gary Speed had been under a Paedophile football coach when he was a lot younger, not long after the death of Gary Speed, and given the story of Andy Woodward, it wouldn't surprise me if Gary Speed had to go through the same ordeal, and couldn't deal with it, and it was the secret that he took to the grave. Lot was said about the death of Gary Speed, and there was lots of speculation and rumour about different things but i didn't believe much of it, but sadly i can believe this.

Sexual abuse of Children is absolutely fucking abhorrent, and as a parent I'd like to think that i would be able to do everything possible to shield Brownie Jnr from anything like that, because stuff like that wrecks peoples lives right from the beginning and i couldn't ever allow it to happen to a child of mine. It is just heartbreaking what Woodward had to go through.

The one thing that does shine out in that article was that two hated enemies in Warnock and Ternent both treated him very well and kept the poor fucker going, and kept what he was going through with the mental anguish, to themselves, says a lot about those two as men.
 



Alan Brazil has talked candidly about abuse suffered from a coach. I believe he offered evidence in court. Luckily, despite what he had to endure, he has managed his life better then Andy Woodward has been able too without knowIng how much both have suffered and maybe still do. Well done to him for highlighting this and anyone else brave enough to come forward now or on the future.
 
Sheffsteel said:
If I remember rightly.

I didn't think the trial reached any conclusion.
Their manager was very ill at the time and the case was dropped due to not enough evidence.

Their manager has said its was a massive cloud over his head as some still say there's no smoke without fire etc.
Click to expand...


Not wanting to comment on that but the latest issue of Private Eye has an article about a 79 year old ex senior policeman just sentenced to 12 years for systematic abuse of young boys. PE reported allegations many years ago, along with other newspapers and lost in libel court when the vile bastard sued them all. The Police are now looking at those libel awards to recover them under the Proceeds of Crime Act. Pity they didn't do a proper job in the first place.
 
Deleted Member said:
I saw this on the Guardian website earlier, and i was genuinely shocked by what i read. I barely remember Andy Woodward as a player, who just seemed to be one the players who would come in under Warnock and go after not making much impact,

I can vaguely remember hearing that that Gary Speed had been under a Paedophile football coach when he was a lot younger, not long after the death of Gary Speed, and given the story of Andy Woodward, it wouldn't surprise me if Gary Speed had to go through the same ordeal, and couldn't deal with it, and it was the secret that he took to the grave. Lot was said about the death of Gary Speed, and there was lots of speculation and rumour about different things but i didn't believe much of it, but sadly i can believe this.

Sexual abuse of Children is absolutely fucking abhorrent, and as a parent I'd like to think that i would be able to do everything possible to shield Brownie Jnr from anything like that, because stuff like that wrecks peoples lives right from the beginning and i couldn't ever allow it to happen to a child of mine. It is just heartbreaking what Woodward had to go through.

The one thing that does shine out in that article was that two hated enemies in Warnock and Ternent both treated him very well and kept the poor fucker going, and kept what he was going through with the mental anguish, to themselves, says a lot about those two as men.
Click to expand...

I totally agree with you, Sexual abuse of Children is absolutely fucking abhorrent. I think you do have to be careful when you refer to Gary Speed or anyone else though. Whilst I have absolutely no idea as to what happened, the last thing anyone wants to do it create conjecture as this just allows the dirty cunts to hide in the fog of rumours and gossip.

Someone very very close to me was abused when she was 12 by someone involved with a club not far from here. I have his name and his number. He got a few years for it but the cunt will wish he got a few more when he bumps into me (not long now).
 
It's always the same, and it makes me sick. The Church, the BBC, the Rotherham scandal, every single time we hear it we know that a lot of "good" people either knew or must've strongly suspected of what was going on. And in every case evil went unchecked because "good" men did nothing. We get the inevitable excuses when the reality is that if just a couple of people pay attention and take the victims seriously the abusers, if they didn't face the criminal justice system, would at the very least have seen the trust and secrecy they need to thrive torn away from them.

I don't want to vilify anyone who sincerely didn't know what was happening. I'm just saying that enough people would have seen the signs, heard the rumours, and been happier to let it slide than be the one who dared speak out. A coach spends years having young boys stay at his house overnight; someone's had suspicions, someone's heard the rumours, seen a change in some of the kids.
 
When I was coaching we regularly had scouts watching ,they were supposed to introduce themselves to the manager before a game ,2 never did ,they were from Wendy and Derby ,I told the Derby one to fuck off as I didn't like or trust him, I feel I should have followed that up. A few other managers disturbed me too ,not in a sexual abuse way but in a mental abuse way ,you have to be assertive with young lads but some were well over the line. Once a club took one of your players you had no feedback or control until that player came back to you ,don't know if that is still the case ,but almost every player I had taken came back a far worse player ,some with real issues and some just kicked it into touch. Whether that's because their dreams had been destroyed or other matters you never know as teenage lads will not open up. Its a murky world that is for sure ,its only 4 years since I came out of it but I hope things have changed.
 
PokerBlade said:
It's always the same, and it makes me sick. The Church, the BBC, the Rotherham scandal, every single time we hear it we know that a lot of "good" people either knew or must've strongly suspected of what was going on. And in every case evil went unchecked because "good" men did nothing. We get the inevitable excuses when the reality is that if just a couple of people pay attention and take the victims seriously the abusers, if they didn't face the criminal justice system, would at the very least have seen the trust and secrecy they need to thrive torn away from them.

I don't want to vilify anyone who sincerely didn't know what was happening. I'm just saying that enough people would have seen the signs, heard the rumours, and been happier to let it slide than be the one who dared speak out. A coach spends years having young boys stay at his house overnight; someone's had suspicions, someone's heard the rumours, seen a change in some of the kids.
Click to expand...


I think it’s a difficult one. The crime are so heinous that it’s very difficult to accuse someone without strong evidence. Imagine being wrongly accused. Imagine what life would have been like for people like Dave Jones when it was all going on? Such a delicate subject. A very difficult one to raise if you don’t know with any certainty. A really difficult subject and I’d be reluctant to be too harsh on anyone other than the perpetrators of the abuse without knowing exactly what they knew or believed and what evidence they had.
 
When Bert was a lad there used to be a bloke called David Haslam from Chapeltown who used to run boys football teams. He was known as Bummer Haslam by every kid in the district because of how he was always touching up lads and showing them mucky magazines etc. They caught up with him in the end and locked him up but it went on for years. People got away with far more in those days.
He's dead now.
 
Bert said:
When Bert was a lad there used to be a bloke called David Haslam from Chapeltown who used to run boys football teams. He was known as Bummer Haslam by every kid in the district because of how he was always touching up lads and showing them mucky magazines etc. They caught up with him in the end and locked him up but it went on for years. People got away with far more in those days.
He's dead now.
Click to expand...

Good. Good riddance to the cunt.
 
Bert said:
When Bert was a lad there used to be a bloke called David Haslam from Chapeltown who used to run boys football teams. He was known as Bummer Haslam by every kid in the district because of how he was always touching up lads and showing them mucky magazines etc. They caught up with him in the end and locked him up but it went on for years. People got away with far more in those days.
He's dead now.
Click to expand...
There was a teacher at our school just the same ,hes not dead yet unfortunately and actually became England manager for a short time , the fucking nonce.
 
BushBlade said:
I believe the investigations into abuse in North Wales Children's Homes have not yet been concluded. I read a couple of weeks ago that a senior police officer who had previously won a libel case against newspapers who had printed allegations against him, after he was found not guilty in a previous trial, has now been convicted. I will try to find the story and post a link.


Edit: https://www.google.co.uk/amp/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/37861254?client=safari
Click to expand...
These evil bastards that abuse children while in a position of trust are so vile, yet also many are very well connected, some MPs during the Thatcher years were implicated but never properly investigated due to their position of power. The church is another vile pedophile network with proven cases of children being abused all over the world and the Vatican protecting their own.
 
Bert said:
When Bert was a lad there used to be a bloke called David Haslam from Chapeltown who used to run boys football teams. He was known as Bummer Haslam by every kid in the district because of how he was always touching up lads and showing them mucky magazines etc. They caught up with him in the end and locked him up but it went on for years. People got away with far more in those days.
He's dead now.
Click to expand...

There was also a bloke round there called Councillor Francis Butler, who there was a lot of rumours around and was heavily involved in boys football when I was a lad and I think the scouts when I was a lad. He also used to fancy himself as a bit of a big hitter as well. He ended up getting prosecuted for indecent assault on young boys a few years back.

He was a total and complete utter shithouse. Used his position in local circles to bully and harass people. My old dear told me some stories about him ages ago, and it made my blood boil. She used to volunteer for the Scouts and tried blowing the whistle on him back in the 1980s. But happily I think he ended up having to move away from Chapeltown because of the sheer amount of abuse and threats he got after it came out that he was being prosecuted, and he died a short while later. I can always remember seeing him one Friday afternoon on a hot sunny day walking past the Carousel whilst we was stood outside drinking, and we serenaded him with the old favourite of Paedo, Paedo, Paedophile to the tune of I am a Music Man. He looked a broken man at that stage. I just hope his final days were lonely and miserable......
 



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