Ched Evans: Why is the FA doing Sweet FA? – Employment Law Advocates

Imagine the following situation. A doctor is found guilty of raping a woman in a hotel room but a hospital decides that it is prepared to give him a job when he is released from prison. There is a huge public outcry. The hospital eventually withdraws the offer. However, there is another hospital which wants to employ him. There is another outcry and another offer is withdrawn. And so on and so on, in an endless cycle. Does this grim scenario sound in any way familiar?

In fact, however, it would be very unlikely to happen because of the role of the General Medical Council, the body which regulates doctors. After his release, the doctor would be disciplined by the GMC and he would either be struck off the medical register or he would be given a lengthy ban from practising. The GMC is independent of hospitals which reduces the risk of a conflict of interest. The big danger of leaving the decision to the hospitals is that, if the doctor is particularly talented, they might be tempted to overlook the rape conviction.

In one sense, footballers are also regulated and their regulator is the Football Association. The FA decides how long a ban a player should serve for on-field misconduct, for example John Terry’s racial abuse of Anton Ferdinand, or Luis Suarez’s biting of Branislav Ivanovic (although, just like the GMC, it sometimes refers the decision to an independent panel, which it appoints). The players have a right of appeal and so, if a punishment is felt to be too harsh, a case can be brought to the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne, Switzerland. This judicial process creates consistency and prevents the clubs’ self-interest from affecting the outcome, either to the benefit or to the detriment of players.

Therefore, the FA would seem to be in a strong position to decide what to do about Ched Evans. Petitions have been launched to persuade Sheffield United and Oldham Athletic not to sign him but the Football Association has received much less attention. Perhaps it has been hoping that, if it keeps its head down and says absolutely nothing, nobody will notice that there is an opportunity for it to act. Alarmingly, this strategy appears to have been remarkably successful.

Unlike doctors, footballers do not pose an obvious risk to the public. But nor do other regulated professions, such as solicitors. Yet, following his conviction for rape in 1993, Angus Diggle was suspended from practising for a year after his release from prison, a decision which some commentators at the time thought had been unduly lenient. When, in a later incident, he was drunkenly abusive to a couple of police officers, he was struck off the roll of solicitors altogether.

Diggle had been charged with “bringing the profession into disrepute“, a turn of phrase all too familiar to football fans. Club personnel are often disciplined for “bringing the game into disrepute”, most commonly for criticising referees. But if anything brings the game into disrepute, raping a teenager who is too drunk to consent definitely qualifies. There are differences between football players and solicitors, of course. I would not ask Wayne Rooney to advise me about a complex commercial contract and many solicitors would be delighted to be paid what Ched Evans earned before his conviction. But both of them are privileged and aspirational careers, which come under considerable public scrutiny. They both surely benefit from taking a tough line on how their protagonists behave.

And let’s get another thing out of the way. Ched Evans has not served his time. Like all prisoners who are released early, his sentence has not been cut short. He has been allowed to serve it in the community but a number of restrictions have been placed on him. His right to travel abroad is severely curtailed and the Ministry of Justice has already confirmed that he would not be permitted to resume his career in Malta until the non-custodial part of his sentence is over.

So what could the FA do? There is an interesting precedent. Although Oscar Pistorius has been jailed for five years for the manslaughter of his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, there remains the possibility that he will be released after serving just ten months. However, the International Paralympic Committee has banned him from all competitions for the entire five year period, however little of it he spends in prison. “If someone is charged by court they must serve their full sentence regardless of whether they are released early or not”, said the IPC’s director of communications, Craig Spence. Pistorius has not appealed the decision, and so there has not been a conclusive ruling from the Court of Arbitration for Sport, but I suspect that a ban of this nature would be upheld, and there is a good chance that a longer suspension would stand up as well.

Writing in the Sun, Karren Brady has suggested that Ched Evans should also be banned from playing at least until the end of his original five year term. The Football Association has been getting away with its lack of activity so far but the pressure is increasing on it to remove its ostrich-like head from the sand. Jean Hatchet, the blogger who started the original petition, has called on it to take a stand. The shadow sports minister, Clive Efford, has also asked the FA to intervene, as has his Labour Party colleague, Seema Malhotra, in a piece for the Huffington Post. Now that Ched Evans is highly likely to sign for Oldham Athletic at any moment, the time has come to step up and take responsibility.