Soccer: Duberry faces abuse after change of evidence
The last-minute decision by Michael Duberry to implicate Jonathan Woodgate in an attack on an Asian student will always follow him, his counsel has told his trial.
Claire Montgomery, QC, told Hull Crown Court that whether Duberry was acquitted or convicted of a conspiracy charge he would be accused of being a grass.
Duberry, 25, confessed to lying to police about events following the attack on Sarfraz Najeib, 20, in Leeds in January last year.
"Football fans will abuse him for the damage his evidence has done to one of their idols," Miss Montgomery said.
Duberry told the court Woodgate told him he and friends had been in a fight with some Asians and that one of them, Paul Clifford, had bitten the victim.
Miss Montgomery said that for prosecution and defence to suggest that Duberry's decision to change his evidence had something to do with football was both absurd and cruel.
She said it had been suggested that Duberry had implicated Woodgate either to set himself up with a lucrative transfer deal or take Woodgate's place in the Leeds team.
She said Duberry was a proud man brought low by his experience and without guile.
She told the jury: "You have seen him. Do you think he is so fickle, so shallow that he would sell his best friend down the river for Leeds United? Did he strike you as a sly, spiteful man who would trim his evidence to please his football club, a man so calculating he would destroy Jonathan Woodgate just because Leeds United asked him to?"
Bowyer, aged 24, of Leeds, Woodgate, aged 21, of Middlesbrough and Neale Caveney and Clifford, both aged 21, of Middlesbrough, deny causing grievous bodily harm to Mr Najeib of Rotherham, South Yorkshire. They also deny affray.
Woodgate, Duberry, Caveney and Clifford also plead not guilty to conspiring to pervert the course of justice after the attack.
