Everton’s stance on its star player was clear and unequivocal at the start of the 2004–5 season. The Toffees’ chief executive Trevor Birch proclaimed: ‘The definitive position is that Wayne Rooney is not for sale.’
Well, almost definitive. The cash-strapped club needed the money they would get from selling their golden egg. Besides, the golden egg wanted to run away and there was nothing the club or its manager could do about it. Wayne Rooney had decided to jump ship from Everton that summer. He had been talking to other players in the England dressing room who set out the attractions of the bigger clubs: better money (in fact, much better money), more chance of pots, a bigger machine to deal with the nasty things of life, like tabloid reporters. And there is no doubt that Roo did end his time at Everton miserable and unhappy and in a sulk.
Resentment at slights from David Moyes – real or imagined – oozes from the pages of his autobiography. He says that after his goal-scoring success in his early career at Everton, he began to think there was one person who seemed to be ‘a bit upset and envious’ of what was happening to him and that was his manager. He adds that he began to suspect that Moyes was unhappy that Rooney was getting such an extraordinary amount of attention.
The Everton manager asked the obvious question – why did Roo want to go? Rooney claims that ‘he just wanted to get away from Liverpool’. And there is another, unstated, big reason that the player might have wanted to leave the Toffees: they hadn’t been doing very well that season, and unless the club got its own sugar daddy – and that didn’t seem likely at that point – they would be unable to hit the big time.
Roo claimed in his book that the next day the gist of the conversation between Moyes and him appeared in the Echo, including stuff about the prostitutes – an allegation that amounted to a gross abuse of trust by the manager to his player and caused him to say that he never wanted to play for Moyes again. Moyes sued and in the summer of 2008 won in the High Court, with Rooney’s publishers reportedly paying him £50,000 in damages – which the manager donated to the Everton Former Players’ Foundation – and £250,000 in costs.
Rooney’s allegation was always absurd. Moyes has a reputation for quiet integrity, and a general wariness of the press. Some managers are gobby; Moyes is not. He weighs his words very carefully and is balanced, thoughtful and restrained in virtually every interview he has given to the press. The libel case raises questions about Rooney’s judgement, obviously, but also about that of his number one business adviser, Paul Stretford – yet again.
The move from Everton was seen as a ‘money-grubbing’ betrayal by loyal fans, which strikes me as being a little unfair. Roo isn’t motivated by money, but by playing and winning at football. And I don’t doubt that he felt genuine pain at leaving the club that he and his family had supported his whole life. The idea that he was leaving the Toffees just for money must have wounded him deeply – and, worse, he lacked the verbal ability and agility to put across his point of view.
In the end, he texted it.
He was watching Sky Sports on TV with Coleen at her uncle’s house when the subject of him leaving Everton came up. Evertonians were texting in, saying that he was a right greedy bastard, a hypocrite, never a ‘true blue’. So he felt compelled to text: ‘I left because the club was doing my head in – Wayne Rooney.’ The Sky presenter asked would the people pretending to be Wayne Rooney stop sending text messages.
In my view Sky’s not the brightest media organisation on the planet, although later on, according to My Story So Far, they realised the messages really were from Roo because they made a funny, peculiar reference to him: ‘We know Wayne Rooney is watching – and we are watching him.’
When this gnomic announcement was made, Roo and Coleen happened to be sitting in their auntie’s conservatory with the lights off peering out into the darkness. A thought crossed their minds: were they being watched? The moment of paranoia was ill founded.
But what was real was the passionate, tribal hatred for the outcast; Everton’s greatest player for a generation had turned out to be, in Toffee terms, a traitor. Roo, Stretford and, to a much lesser extent, the extended Rooney and McLoughlin families all got it in the neck. Roo is a big boy, but even he was shaken by it: it became truly scary.
Two teams appeared to be in the running for Roo: Newcastle and Manchester United. Despite headlines like ‘ROMAN IN FOR ROONSKI’ Chelsea never made an approach, Roo says. Newcastle offered £20 million, but their interest always seemed a little half hearted. To cut to the chase, the Hairdryer at Manchester upped his bid to the best part of £30 million, and Roo was moving down the East Lancs Road to Old Trafford, Proactive laughing all the way to the bank as it was entitled to up to £1.5 million for its part in the deal.
The news was greeted in Liverpool with the city’s customary wit. In the Everton FC shop someone stuck up a sign: ‘SALE: half price on all Rooney stock!’
In late September 2004, Roo, now fully fit, walked on to the sacred-to-some turf at Old Trafford for his debut performance for the Reds against Turkey’s Fenerbahçe and answered his critics in the only way he knows how, with a hat-trick.
RIP IT LIKE ROONEY: HIDE THE SCISSORS, MUMS AND DADS!
ENJOY: THE GREATEST DEBUT IN HISTORY
RED BULL ROON
WIN 3 GREAT ROONEY UTD KITS
MAKE WAYNE A NATIONAL TREASURE – SUN CAMPAIGN
The Sun, which readers who have been paying attention will have noticed was grubbing around his alleged, non-evidenced fandango with the Auld Slapper only a few weeks before, had switched again.
That’s fickle with a capital F.
The red-top’s campaign to make Rooney a national treasure was launched with a story by Harry Macadam. The Sun sent a letter and application form to the then Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Tessa Jowell, requesting Wayne be granted national treasure status. If the paper succeeded, he would be declared a ‘cultural good of outstanding national importance’ – meaning he can never leave Britain to play for a foreign side. The striker would join a string of other national assets saved for ever for the good of the nation. He would be protected beside items like a £12.5 million Joshua Reynolds portrait and a George II silver soup tureen. As government advisers must examine any object before it is made a national treasure, the paper included film footage of Wayne’s hat-trick. Sports minister Richard Caborn said: ‘Thank you for writing and sending the terrific video.’
Cheeky blighters.
Henry Winter of the Daily Telegraph is a measured chap, not one to get carried away. But even he tap-tapped out a paean of praise for the man with golden boots: ‘The wrecking ball that is Wayne Rooney swung devastatingly through European defences again last night. Ninety-six days after he limped away from Euro 2004, the English prodigy marked his Manchester United debut with a wonderful hat-trick.’ The rest of Fleet Street said the same. The Hairdryer himself kept on calling him the boy, but otherwise thought he was wonderful, as did his teammates, as did the Red Army.
Someone overdid it. Alan Brazil, one of TalkSport’s football presenters, proclaimed of Wayne Rooney’s hat-trick against Fenerbahçe: ‘Three more bombs fell on Turkey last night!’ and was promptly sacked by the station’s boss – one Kelvin MacKenzie, who had finally discovered the subtle delights of taste and decency.
Off the pitch, however, things weren’t quite so rosy. What links Wayne Rooney, the soccer legend, with Tommy Adams, the gangster? The dark side of Wayne’s World – the connection with the profession of violence – came out at Warrington Crown Court in September and October 2004, when Hyland and the Bacon brothers stood trial, charged with blackmailing Roo’s agent Paul Stretford. (Hyland, Bacon Major and Bacon Minor had gone after Stretford, a living, flesh and blood, human being, not Proactive. You can’t get much out of a certificate of incorporation stuck on a wall.)
The real question was: who invited the gangster to the party?
The Crown’s case was put by barrister John Hedgecoe. He told the jury that the offence of blackmail is committed if a person with a view to gain for himself or another or with intent to cause loss to another makes any unwarranted demand with menaces, that is to say by intimidation. A demand made with menaces is unwarranted unless the person making it believes a) that he has reasonable ground for making this demand, and b) that the use of menaces, or intimidation, is a proper means of reinforcing the demand.
The jury hanging on his every word, Hedgecoe said that in July 2003 Hyland threatened and intimidated Stretford, demanding that he sign a contract which would, if honoured, result in the payment of thousands of pounds to Hyland or to others in circumstances where Hyland knew that neither he nor anybody else was entitled to have Stretford sign that contract. The Bacon brothers were there as part of a joint enterprise to intimidate Stretford. Christopher Bacon, said Hedgecoe, actually became involved himself, speaking to Stretford in a very menacing manner that was clearly designed to frighten him so that he would sign the contract.
The barrister took the jury back to the start of the story, in December 2000, when young Wayne at the age of fifteen signed a contract with Peter McIntosh’s Proform Sports Management Ltd, set to last for two years. The turning point was when Rooney started to play for England youth sides and other agents became interested in managing him, and one of those was Proactive Sports Management Ltd. Wayne played at Everton with a young footballer called Sean Doherty, the son of Mick Doherty, who was then in charge of Everton’s youth recruitment, and Wayne’s parents got to know Doherty Senior. In September 2001 Mick Doherty moved to Proactive in a youth recruitment post after his son had left to play for Fulham and he told Wayne’s parents about Proactive.
Hedgecoe said: ‘On 27 May 2002, Wayne’s parents went to a meeting at the Wilmslow office of Proactive where they met representatives of Proactive, including Paul Stretford, the chief executive. Following that meeting the Rooney family decided that they wanted Proactive to look after the interests of Wayne Rooney.’
Nod-nod at the judge and step out of court for a quick existentialist fag break. Proactive was a much bigger, more impressive affair, with scores of professional soccer players on its books. Stretford’s Proactive was, if not a great white shark, a pretty big dogfish to McIntosh’s sardine. It’s not very surprising that the Rooneys were minded to switch to Proactive.
Back in court, the Crown’s barrister was cracking on with the story. The Rooneys sent a letter to McIntosh at Proform, telling him they wished to dispense with his services when the existing agreement ended in December 2002. The letter, dated 27 June 2002, signed by Big Wayne and Jeanette Rooney, spelt out the bad news to McIntosh in curious managerialese, as if it had been written by another hand.
As you are aware the contract between Wayne and yourself expires in December 2002. Following careful consideration we have decided that we will not be renewing this agreement. This is no way a reflection of the work that you have undertaken to date. It is more a review of what we believe are Wayne’s requirements going forward. We have therefore made a number of approaches to other football management companies in order to gain an understanding of the services that they offer. We have decided to sign for Proactive Sports Management based in Wilmslow from December, 2002 … It only remains for me to thank you for all your support and efforts and to wish you all the best for the future.
You could forgive McIntosh for moaning, ‘What future?’
That summer, said Hedgecoe, Mrs Rooney got a phone call from a man called Dave Lockwood who said that he had bought out Proform, and that his company, X8, now represented Wayne. He asked for a meeting with the Rooneys and one took place in October 2002, attended by the Rooneys Senior, Lockwood, John Ebbrell, the former Everton ‘Dog of War’ – not exactly a name on the sporting nation’s lips – and John Hyland. Lockwood and Hyland tried to persuade the Rooneys to let Wayne stay with X8. The meeting only confirmed their decision to go with Proactive, said Hedgecoe.
Stretford and Proactive wanted to get their hands on Roo as quickly as possible, so they decided to offer X8 a lump sum to terminate the contract early. X8 said no, not enough and not the right terms, and the matter went to solicitors. The stand-off between the two camps continued. In November 2002, said Hedgecoe, Stretford was approached by Liverpool legend Kenny Dalglish, an associate of the Proactive company.
Let’s pop out of the courtroom for a bit and think about Dalglish. A Scot, not a Scouser, he was raised a spanner throw from W. H. Auden’s ‘glade of cranes’, Glasgow’s Govan shipyard. The son of a Protestant engineer, Dalglish, as a boy, was a tribal Glasgow Rangers fan, but cherished a move into big football boots more than his roots. When Rangers’ great rivals, Celtic, came knocking at his door, Dalglish ran upstairs to his bedroom and frantically hid the incriminating posters on his wall of his boyhood gods, the Rangers.
In 1977 he was spirited off to Liverpool, for a transfer fee of £440,000, which sounds like small change today but was at that time a record. In his first season, Dalglish scored the winning goal in the European Cup final, against Club Brugge, a Belgian team. Dalglish became perhaps the best player of his generation.
Hedgecoe said that following Dalglish’s approach, on 13 November, Stretford flew to Heathrow and attended a meeting at the Le Meridien Hotel. Stretford turned up with Dalglish. Also present were John Hyland, Dave Lockwood of X8, Peter McIntosh of Proform, Ebbrell, Tony Bruce and Tommy Adams.
Hedgecoe told the jury:
The atmosphere in that room was extremely unfriendly. Hyland was very aggressive. He said Stretford was a bully and he did not like bullies. He said that this was not an ordinary business situation and it was not going to go away. He said that he did not care what the legal situation was; it would not help Stretford in that situation. And he threatened to make problems for another Proactive client, Kevin Campbell, the Everton captain. Hyland then proposed that the solution was for Proactive to manage Wayne Rooney but to pay all the resulting income to X8/Proform. Stretford saw that as a threat rather than a business deal and refused to accede, despite efforts made by Bruce and Adams to persuade him to accept. The meeting then broke up and shortly afterwards Paul Stretford told Mr Thomas Rooney – Wayne Rooney’s father – what had taken place.
What doesn’t appear to make sense here is what Tommy Adams was up to. Later, the defence in the blackmail trial asserted that Adams was not a neutral but in the Proactive camp. But, if so, why was he pushing Stretford to do a spectacularly masochistic deal with the opposition? One of the frustrations of writing about gangsters is one can’t just phone them up and say, ‘Excuse me, Mr Gangster, would you kindly explain your behaviour at the meeting of 13 November 2002?’ They’ve ticked the no-publicity box, big time. To be fair to Tommy Adams, there’s extremely unreliable gossip – not mentioned in court – that at the 13 November meeting at one very tense moment when Hyland was berating Stretford for making eyes at him, Tommy spoke up and said: ‘I don’t know about everybody else, but I could murder a cup of tea.’ Everybody laughed, but you would, wouldn’t you?
But what was Tommy Adams’s game, eh?
Hedgecoe’s narrative continued. At Hyland’s suggestion another meeting took place a week later, on 20 November, this time at the Moss Nook restaurant near Manchester airport. At this meeting only Hyland and Stretford were present. Stretford, clearly under pressure, offered a solution to the problem by suggesting that Proactive should buy out X8/Proform so as to have total control. Hyland agreed enthusiastically and immediately telephoned Tommy Adams. Stretford spoke to Tommy, who was clearly in agreement.
To take another breather from court for a moment or two, it was clear that Tommy Adams was no stand-in spear-carrier in the drama. Hyland was treating Adams as some kind of wigless judge. But what exactly Adams was up to remains, at this point, a bit of a mystery.
One intriguing angle which emerged in legal argument before the blackmail trial proper kicked off was a defence submission to hear the evidence of a minder, sorry, security consultant, an ex-soldier and fireman called Billy Lindfield. Lord Carlile told the judge that Lindfield would testify that he drove Stretford to a meeting with Hyland at the Moss Nook restaurant. ‘He drove Mr Stretford there in Mr Stretford’s black Mercedes car and he drove him away from there. Mr Lindfield says that on the occasion of the Nook restaurant meeting, Mr Stretford had with him a bag and Mr Stretford told him that there was £250,000 in cash in the bag. Mr Stretford told him that this was money that he hoped to use as a pay-off to John Hyland. It is part of our case that Mr Stretford offered John Hyland cash.’
Lord Carlile tried to persuade the court, even before the trial had kicked off that Hyland and Co. weren’t blackmailers. This was just a business dispute, and Stretford had been negotiating all along – and the cash in the bag was possible evidence that he at one stage considered paying Hyland and Co. Judge Hale thanked the defence for its pains, but decided that it did not mean that the trial should not go ahead, and the Crown’s case started.
Lindfield’s assertion about the cash in the bag was widely reported in the newspapers at the time – quality as well as red top. Stretford has emphatically and consistently denied this story. There was never any cash. The incident never happened – nor could it ever have, because Stretford says he had no way of getting hold of that amount of cash, nor would it have been right or proper to do so. The police checked his bank accounts and found that no such withdrawal had ever taken place.
Back to the prosecution narrative, as told in court. Hedgecoe explained that a few days after the Moss Nook meeting Hyland contacted Stretford again, refusing the offer of a buyout and insisting on a deal in respect of Wayne Rooney. He made further repeated calls to Stretford, who was now becoming extremely stressed and whose health was suffering. They met again on 25 November 2002. Once again Hyland was very aggressive. Stretford agreed to meet Dave Lockwood on 2 December at the Lord Daresbury Hotel. When that meeting took place Stretford agreed to pay X8 a lump sum of £25,000 plus a (potentially very much larger) percentage of commissions earned in the name of Wayne Rooney over the next three years. Lockwood agreed to put that offer to Hyland. A few days later Stretford received an abusive call from Hyland refusing the offer. Hyland continued to phone Stretford and on 12 December 2002, the night before Wayne Rooney’s contract with Proform expired, he made a very aggressive call to Stretford, insisting upon 50 per cent of all income from Wayne Rooney’s contracts with Proactive.
Hedgecoe told the court that Stretford said he would agree but with certain caveats. He did not tell Hyland what those were at that time but he planned that they would involve deduction of Proactive’s costs before paying anything to X8 or Proform or Hyland, and limiting the length of the contract term to five years or less.
Hedgecoe continued: matters went quiet for some time and Wayne Rooney signed a new contract with Everton. Hyland then telephoned Stretford, telling him to attend a meeting at the Novotel hotel at Euston on 21 March 2003. Present were Stretford, Hyland, Tony Bruce and Tommy Adams. Stretford began by raising his caveats – not that he would have called them that: the question of deduction of Proactive’s costs, and limiting the length of the contract. Hyland lost his temper at that point and demanded 50 per cent of all income over a period of ten years.
The barrister didn’t spell it out, but some connoisseurs of how money works in the beautiful game were speculating back in 2004 that Rooney could make £100 million over the next ten years or so. So how much would be the agent’s slice of the Wazza action? Several million pounds. If Rooney helps win the World Cup, then his potato face could win a smart agent a very great deal of money.
Even with Stretford’s caveats in place, we are still talking about Hyland and X8 getting millions of pounds for doing not a lot. It’s nice work if you can get it. But could they?
Back to the prosecution opening: Hedgecoe told the jury that the others at the meeting – Tony Bruce and Tommy Adams – persuaded Hyland to accept the caveats. (The surreal comedy of convicted drug baron Tommy Adams, widely believed to have been behind a series of gangland wetjobs, allegedly piping up with an obscure Latinism like ‘caveat’ was lost on Hedgecoe, if not the reporters sitting on the press bench.)
Next, said Hedgecoe, on 31 March 2003, Dave Lockwood of X8 met Stretford at the Lord Daresbury Hotel amid the Jabberwockery and told him that Hyland now refused to accept that staff costs should be deductible under the contract; that’s to say Hyland said a big no to one of those caveats.
Stretford disagreed, and Lockwood in that meeting said he would try to sort the problem out. Some time later Stretford received a form of written contract by email. It was from X8’s solicitors and purported to be an agreement between a company called IMRA Consultants Ltd and Proactive. Hedgecoe set out the terms: the contract was to run for ten years; payments due from Proactive were to be indemnified personally by Stretford himself; IMRA, under the contract, were to have the right to audit Proactive’s accounts and also the right to control any decisions taken over Wayne Rooney’s career.
To step away from the courtroom again, this contract would have meant misery for Stretford. By signing this document, he would have handed over effective control of his star asset, Rooney, his company’s accounts and his own finances to John Hyland, who had, he felt, threatened him repeatedly.
Hedgecoe took the narrative on: Stretford was angry but he was also frightened. He rang Lockwood and told him to go to hell and to tell Hyland to forget it, and he discussed the matter with colleagues and took some advice. He decided to set up a meeting with Dave Lockwood and to arrange that that meeting would be secretly filmed. He contacted a specialist security company based in Hereford (home of the Special Air Service squadron, and all sorts of private surveillance outfits that go bump in the night; Hedgecoe did not mention Tom Lockhart’s name in his opening speech, but it came out in later evidence).
Yet another meeting was arranged at the Lord Daresbury between Stretford and Lockwood. The new security consultant – Lockhart – set up a hidden camera and microphone in the Kingsley suite and briefed Stretford on what was required of him.
The trap was ready.
Lockwood, said Hedgecoe, arrived and the meeting started shortly after 5.30 p.m. on 4 June 2003. After some initial chat Lockwood put a copy of the IMRA contract on the table.
Stretford’s plan had been merely to film Lockwood and record the meeting between himself and Lockwood and the demands made by Lockwood on behalf of John Hyland. At about 5.40 p.m. Lockwood received a telephone call and left the room for just over a minute. The prosecution believe that that call was probably made to Lockwood by John Hyland because there is evidence that Lockwood’s mobile phone was called at that time by a phone registered in the name of Stephen Hyland, who is John Hyland’s brother, and that is a phone to which the defendant had access. That call was timed at 5.40 p.m. and it lasted for 59 seconds. After taking the call, Lockwood returned to the room, and the discussion continued with Stretford indicating to Lockwood that for a number of reasons the terms of the contract were unacceptable to him.
Hedgecoe carried on: then to Stretford’s amazement at about 6.07 p.m. the defendant John Hyland suddenly entered the room with the two other co-defendants, neither of them known to Stretford, but clearly recruited to assist Hyland in his plan to intimidate Stretford. What happened next was recorded on tape. Hyland was grossly aggressive and intimidating, said the barrister. He demanded that Stretford sign the contract that was on the table. He shouted at Stretford and repeatedly banged his fist on the table. One of the co-defendants, Anthony Bacon, stood to one side of Stretford. But the other one, Christopher Bacon, leaned over Stretford as he sat at the table, speaking menacingly to Stretford and adding to the general atmosphere of intimidation.
(All of it – including Hyland’s charge, ‘You scheming little prick’, and Chris Bacon’s boasts: ‘I’m the muscle’ and ‘If you want to play the gangster bit, bring any man you want into it. Doesn’t mind me… honestly, that’s my game’ – had been caught on the secret camera. To be fair, I think that Chris Bacon was only pretending to ‘play the gangster’, but boasting in England that you are up for playing the ‘gangster bit’ when you are not gives you some indication of just how thick you have to be to take up cage fighting.)
The barrister went on: Lockwood gave the impression that he had not expected the intrusion by Hyland and the others. He continued to try to persuade Stretford to sign the contract, but Stretford still refused. Eventually, Stretford left the hotel and telephoned the security consultant from his car to tell him what had transpired and then he burst into tears. Stretford has told people that it felt as close as he’d ever come to a real threat of severe harm, or worse.
Later, during the trial proper, Hedgecoe asked Stretford how the situation was affecting his health. The agent began to cry and asked for a moment to compose himself. He said: ‘I developed an arthritic nature in my foot’ – that’s what it says in the court transcript, but obviously an arthritic nature doesn’t make sense – ‘caused by stress. I had to take medication that I’m now on every day of my life. During the course of this I was going for medical insurance and they found a heart defect.’
(No one has ever said that Stretford has a violent bone in his body. Everyone who has seen the tape has said that the confrontation looked very ugly.)
Hyland was arrested on 3 September 2003, and he kept mum. Chris Bacon was arrested on 23 December and he declined to answer questions, but he read out a prepared statement denying that he had been involved in any intimidation and stating that he was only present to ensure the safety of his friend John Hyland. Anthony Bacon was arrested on 21 January 2004, and he too declined to answer questions but read out a prepared statement, also denying intimidation and stating that he had agreed to attend with Hyland principally because he was concerned for the welfare of his brother, Chris Bacon.
Hedgecoe concluded his opening speech by saying that these three defendants were clearly involved in a very intimidating episode of blackmail in a case where the stakes were potentially enormous.
First up in the witness box was Roo’s dad, ‘Big Wayne’ Rooney. He mumbled his opening answers in such a quiet little boy’s voice that the judge had to ask him to speak up. Rooney the Elder didn’t look comfortable in court and had barely been at it for a minute when trouble occurred.
HEDGECOE: About six months or so before Wayne’s seventeenth birthday did you and your wife Jeanette start to consider Wayne’s future?
BIG WAYNE: Yes.
Up popped Alex, Lord Carlile, John Hyland’s defence Queen’s Counsel. A former Liberal MP, now a mover and shaker in the Establishment, a lifelong Burnley FC fan, Carlile is clever, witty and has a twinkle in his voice. In light entertainment terms, Carlile is Bruce Forsyth while poor old Hedgecoe is, perhaps necessarily, more low key: Private Sponge, say, in Dad’s Army.
Lord Carlile said: ‘Please don’t lead. This is all in issue, I’m afraid, Your Honour, so I would ask my learned friend not to lead. The circumstances leading to events that followed are not agreed.’
This is first-class legal gamesmanship. ‘Leading’ in this context means that Carlile was complaining that Hedgecoe was ‘leading’ the witness, taking him up the exact garden path the prosecution wanted him to go along. The proper way is to ask general questions and the witness will start bubbling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth all on his own. That’s the theory. But it was an astute blow by Carlile because watching Big Wayne in court was like watching someone throw biscuits to a dog. He swallowed everything and didn’t give very much back. He gave the impression of being pretty unwilling to volunteer information unless it was squeezed out of him. If Hedgecoe couldn’t ‘lead’ a little bit, he was going to struggle.
Court rules don’t allow the defence to challenge the prosecution while they are opening the case. It’s bad form. But it is open season the moment a witness starts giving his evidence in chief in the box. At his very first opportunity, Carlile’s Bruce Forsyth was kicking his legs high in front of the jury – while Hedgecoe’s Private Sponge looked on, bleakly. You could almost feel the police slump in their seats, and the twelve good men and women sit up, as if they were thinking to themselves: this jury service could be a bit of a laugh, after Hedgecoe bravely batted on: ‘When did the two of you’ – Rooney Senior and Jeanette – ‘start to consider that position?’
Big Wayne replied: ‘About six months of his contract to go, he was looking to [inaudible] …’
The prosecution case, almost imperceptibly, had begun to ship water. Hedgecoe moved on to the question of who wrote the kiss-off letter to McIntosh’s Proform.
BIG WAYNE: I don’t know.
HEDGECOE: You don’t know.
BIG WAYNE: We just signed it.
Hedgecoe then turned to the letter written in reply to the kiss-off, by Dave Lockwood.
HEDGECOE: Did you read that letter?
BIG WAYNE: I can’t really remember now.
HEDGECOE: You can’t really say whether you read it or not?
BIG WAYNE: Yes.
Roo’s father was fast becoming the witness from hell. He couldn’t remember much of what he had done to make the switch from old agent to new. He was in defence mode, uneasy, unwilling to open up. An idle observer who had just popped his head into court could have been forgiven for making the mistake of thinking that the man in the box was the defendant.
The moment Carlile’s cross-examination kicked off, things got a little livelier. Although this was a trial in which his son’s agent was claiming to be the injured party, and therefore one might have expected Rooney Senior to be more helpful to the prosecution, it soon transpired that the defence got a bit more out of him.
The key, as ever with jury trials, is to ditch legalese and speak in the kind of language that the jury and the witness can understand. It is a simple trick that most lawyers are too up-their-bum to bother with. They talk to the judge and other lawyers in their own etiolated, inspissated argot, sorry, as if they had soup tureen ladles stuck up their bums, leaving the most important people in the courtroom mystified, then bored. The great exception was George Carman, QC, who made seducing juries his life’s work. Carlile is in the Carman school of advocates.
CARLILE: Now we know that everybody knows, I hope, that Wayne plays for Manchester United now but your family are Evertonians, aren’t you, really?
BIG WAYNE: Yes.
CARLILE: Or at least you were. You probably still are in your heart, Mr Rooney. Don’t tell us. And Wayne was an Evertonian from his mother and father’s knee, wasn’t he?
BIG WAYNE: Yes.
Carlile got Big Wayne to admit that he’d boxed at bantamweight with John Hyland when they were young, and that McIntosh had been a relatively frequent visitor to the family home, chatting to Jeanette when she was in, and going to matches and events to watch over the Boy Wonder.
More gold stars for the defence, the point being that McIntosh and, in particular, defendant Hyland were not strangers to the Rooney family, but people they had known for years. Slowly the defence strategy began to reveal itself. What Carlile was seeking to demonstrate was that McIntosh and then Hyland’s legitimate business interests had been unfairly pushed aside by Stretford and his associates before the original contract ended in December 2002. The legal test was that you could call it blackmail if the pressure to get money was unwarranted. If the pressure was warranted then the judge would have to throw the whole case out.
But getting answers out of Rooney Senior was like getting wine out of a cow. If he wouldn’t even begin to talk about what happened, then the defence was going to struggle.
Sitting behind Carlile was Hyland’s solicitor, Paul Thomas. The legal convention is that the defence solicitor does not address the court. To the jury, the solicitor looks as though he is paid a lot of money for nothing very much, but that’s an illusion. A good defence solicitor is like a swan, serene and silent and pure white above the water, and paddling his scaly black legs like fuck beneath. Thomas had done his homework and it paid off.
Carlile produced a copy of the kiss-off letter from the Rooneys, telling McIntosh’s Proform that they were going to move to Stretford’s Proactive. It had three signatures on it, the first Jeanette’s, the second Big Wayne’s and the third Wayne’s. The defence barrister slowly led Big Wayne into his own little trap.
CARLILE: Do you accept that this must be a copy of the letter that you sent?
BIG WAYNE: Yes.
CARLILE: Because it’s got your signature on it. And it starts: ‘Dear Sir/Madam’. I don’t think that you were in any doubt whether Peter McIntosh was a sir or a madam, were you, Mr Rooney?
BIG WAYNE: No.
CARLILE: No. He’s a man. And if you had been preparing a letter to Mr McIntosh yourself, and there’s no criticism at all of you for not doing it yourself, you would have written ‘Dear Peter’ or ‘Dear Mr McIntosh’, wouldn’t you?
BIG WAYNE: Yes.
CARLILE: This letter was therefore prepared for you and you signed it.
BIG WAYNE: Yes.
CARLILE: And the person who asked you to sign it was who? Mick Doherty or Paul Stretford?
Silence.
CARLILE: Or can’t you remember?
BIG WAYNE: Well, it would probably be one of the two but I can’t say.
CARLILE: One of the two. Because by 27 June 2002, when that letter was written, Paul Stretford was already involved in becoming Wayne’s future agent?
BIG WAYNE: Yes, yes.
Got him. The transcript reveals that the prosecution case had begun to ship water. The defence had got home on the point that Stretford and Co. had not just got the agent’s contract from December 2002. They had written the kiss-off letter to their own rivals five months before and the Rooneys had signed it. It all went towards their argument that the original agent’s rights had been swept aside. But was it enough to knock out the impression made by the fearful monstering of Stretford by Hyland and the Bacons?
No – or at least, not quite.
So who made the first move to ditch the old agent and bring out the new? The Rooneys? Or Stretford and pals?
Rooney’s performances in the FA Youth Cup had been so outstanding, it was obvious to people in the game that he was going to make the Everton first team before very long, and was a player of extraordinary potential. That meant the Rooney family became much more ambitious for their boy and sought a bigger agent. So it was goodbye McIntosh, hello Paul Stretford. Little Wayne was still as far as the law was concerned a minor. In his book, Rooney says that he slept curled up on the sofa while Stretford’s point man, Mick Doherty, discussed all the legal ins and outs with his mum and dad. Then they had gone to Stretford’s office for further chats. But that’s not the full answer. Who made the very first move?
In court, Carlile plucked out the name of one Merseyside footballing great.
CARLILE: Now everybody knows who Kenny Dalglish is, unless they are on another planet or completely uninterested in football. Isn’t it right that ‘H’ [a trader in football intelligence who had been one of the first to spot young Roo’s genius] suggested to you that Wayne should move to a top agency and he suggested an agency he described as Kenny Dalglish’s agency?
BIG WAYNE: No.
CARLILE: No? Have you ever had a conversation with Paul Stretford or Kenny Dalglish about whether Kenny Dalglish’s name should be involved in this case at all?
BIG WAYNE: No.
CARLILE: Not at all? We can take it you have spoken to Paul Stretford about this case, haven’t you?
BIG WAYNE: No, not really, no.
CARLILE: ‘Not really’?
BIG WAYNE: No.
The court transcript goes on like for this for page after page. Did Dalglish have anything to do with it? Big Wayne stuck doggedly to a line that Dalglish never came to his house, never met him, and that he had no idea that Dalglish was in the Proactive team. And yet Carlile plugged on. Finally, he struck gold, kind of.
CARLILE: Isn’t it right that Kenny Dalglish telephoned you to ask if Wayne, young Wayne, was interested in signing up for an agency with which he had a connection?
BIG WAYNE: I have had a phone call off him—
CARLILE: Ah! So Kenny Dalglish rang you, and you are probably aware, aren’t you, that Kenny Dalglish has a senior position in Proactive… He’s the head of recruitment for them, isn’t he?
BIG WAYNE: Well, I couldn’t tell you, to be honest. He might be…
CARLILE: You know he’s there in some capacity. Has he ever told you that he owns two million shares in Proactive?
BIG WAYNE: No.
The phone call from Dalglish appears intriguing. The former Liverpool manager wasn’t just a neutral in this game but someone with two million shares in the agency he had been promoting with his phone call. Proactive’s accounts for spring 2002 boast that their team includes ‘Kenny Dalglish, the former Liverpool star and Championship winning manager of Liverpool and Blackburn Rovers, and Mick Doherty, formerly of Everton, who runs the Group’s Youth Division, identifying the stars of the future’.
How much were Dalglish’s two million shares worth? There is no firm answer to that, other than what the market will pay when the owner decides to sell. Shortly after flotation of the Proactive Group in 2001, the share price peaked at 43p, making a handy £860,000; in 2004 at the time of the trial – and all the terrible publicity – they had crashed to a little under 8p a share, giving Dalglish, if he had been minded to sell, a mere £157,000.
The 2002 accounts for Proactive show that the company had roughly 100 million shares and had a turnover of roughly £4 million, with a profit of £673,000. Proactive, under chief executive, Paul Stretford, although clearly bigger than Proform, was not coining it big time. But if Proactive could get their hands on the Rooney contract, potentially worth as much as £2 million a year, turnover would grow by half. If Proactive got Rooney, one would have expected Dalglish’s shares to rocket in price.
Carlile gnawed away at it, like a dog with a bone.
CARLILE: Has Kenny Dalglish ever been to the house where you were living?
BIG WAYNE: No.
CARLILE: Not ever?
BIG WAYNE: No.
And gnawed and gnawed.
CARLILE: Was Kenny Dalglish to your knowledge … ever involved in anything to do with Wayne signing up for Proactive?
BIG WAYNE: No.
CARLILE: Were you ever told by Paul Stretford that Kenny Dalglish was going to do some work or get involved in any way in dealing with Wayne’s contract with Proactive and his contract with Everton?
CARLILE: (almost giving up) No. And you were never at any meeting in which Kenny Dalglish was present?
BIG WAYNE: No.
CARLILE: Would that be right? At any time?
BIG WAYNE: No.
The key defence issue Carlile wanted out in the open – if true – was that the very first opening move came from the Proactive camp. But Big Wayne wasn’t playing along with that line.
CARLILE: You had been persuaded by Mr Stretford and his team that they were the right people for Wayne’s future?
BIG WAYNE: I wouldn’t say ‘persuaded’. We went to them.
CARLILE: But that was some time after Kenny Dalglish had telephoned you, of course. And you knew, didn’t you, when you went to them, that Kenny Dalglish was associated with them?
BIG WAYNE: No.
CARLILE: You didn’t? Well, who did you think Kenny Dalglish was associated with?
BIG WAYNE: (snottily) What do you mean, who did I think he was associated with?
CARLILE: Well, which agency did you think was Kenny Dalglish’s agency or the one he worked for?
BIG WAYNE: I haven’t got a clue.
JUDGE HALE: (interrupting) I know you know now. But at the time did you know who Dalglish worked for?
BIG WAYNE: No, no.
CARLILE: Well, what was the point of Kenny Dalglish ringing you? What did he suggest when he rang you?
BIG WAYNE: He wanted to talk to us about going to another agency.
CARLILE: To another agency. [The defence barrister could be forgiven for letting slip the tiniest amount of sarcasm in his next question.] And which other agency did he want to talk to you about going to?
CARLILE: But was it his agency?
BIG WAYNE: Well, possibly, yes.
CARLILE: Yes. And that turned out to be Proactive, didn’t it? Right?
Big Wayne assented. The peer of the realm had finally defeated the unemployed labourer from Croxteth. It had been an epic battle, but crucial. The defence could now use this evidence to support their argument that the very first move in what they saw as the illegitimate poaching of Wayne Rooney from his original agent was made by a man who worked for and held two million shares in the agency that ended up getting him – and all of that went towards the defence argument that Hyland reasonably believed he had a fair point when he demanded compensation for lost income. There is, of course, nothing wrong in approaching a footballer’s family and saying ‘Can we represent you…’ and other agencies did so, too. Nevertheless, in the context of this trial, it was a point that helped the defence argument along.
The next step in the defence strategy was to try to convince the jury that Paul Stretford and his team played rough – even dirty – too. The new attack from the defence was going to be that Proactive weren’t choirboys, but were mixed up with tricksy folk and a gangster, too. It appears that the aim was to cancel out the very real sense of threat made by Hyland and the Bacons on the video.
The very next day, 5 October 2004, Carlile added into the mix the name of another Liverpool legend, though one not quite so glorious as Kenny Dalglish.
CARLILE: Now I want to ask you about a man called Kevin Dooley. Kevin Dooley was what?’
BIG WAYNE: Which?
CARLILE: What was he? What did Kevin Dooley do for a living when you first got to meet him?
BIG WAYNE: Solicitor.
When Big Wayne met Kevin Alphonsus Dooley in the summer of 2002 he just happened to be perhaps the biggest crook on the Law Society’s books. I can write that without fear of any libel because Dooley had just been condemned by his professional body for an atrocious series of cons against his clients amounting to millions in dishonest frauds and was awaiting sentence. A few weeks later in September 2002 he was struck off.
And because he died in 2004. Dead men don’t sue.
Kevin Dooley was the lawyer of choice to Liverpool’s soccer stars, gangsters and, funnily enough, at least one former Chief Constable, Sir Kenneth Oxford. His clients numbered former Liverpool players Kenny Dalglish, Robbie Fowler and Graeme Souness, and Everton striker Duncan Ferguson. He also acted for Curtis ‘Cocky’ Warren, Britain’s richest gangster, and enforcer-turned-author Charlie Seiga.
It is fair to say that Dooley was, as crooked lawyers go, crooked. A docker’s son, he grew up in the Scotland Road area of Liverpool, leaving school at sixteen and working as a debt collection clerk before qualifying as a solicitor in 1978. Dooley and Co. began in premises on Cherryfield Drive, Kirkby, and Queens Drive, Liverpool, where he employed forty staff. The firm grew and grew like Topsy, with an annual turnover of £1.5 million and profits of £500,000.
But nothing on Planet Dooley was quite as it seemed.
In the early 1990s Dooley had got into bed with a crook called ‘Long John’ Silver. He promised clients phoney investment returns of 1,400 per cent. Dooley allowed ‘Long John’ to use his office as a postal address. Dooley’s Midland Bank manager warned him in ‘no uncertain terms’ not to become involved with ‘Long John’ Silver. (You would have thought the name might be a clue.) The bank manager feared that the proposed transaction was ‘specious’ – fancy talk for plausible on the surface but wrong in reality – and the bank instrument could be forged. Dooley ignored him and stuck with Silver.
In summer 1996, the Office for the Supervision of Solicitors went through the books of Dooley & Co. in a routine inspection and the business with ‘Long John’ came to light. The OSS wrote to Dooley warning him that they ‘have seen numerous examples of this type of transaction and in every case they [are] either fraudulent per se or part of a larger mechanism designed to facilitate a fraud’. Dooley ignored the OSS and stuck with Silver.
The Sheppard family put £100,000 into one of ‘Long John’ Silver’s schemes and lost their money. Some schemes worked. But in one case, three of Dooley’s clients lost $1.4 million – and a judge said he was satisfied ‘this money has been stolen’.
In 2000 the OSS raided Dooley’s firm. In July 2002 Dooley’s case came to the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal – and was fully reported in the Liverpool Echo and by the BBC. The tribunal heard how Dooley had been involved in nineteen or more money scams promising ‘absurd returns’ with ‘Long John’ Silver. Dooley knew that Silver was wanted by police for a series of offences of dishonesty involving a gross breach of trust. Nevertheless, Dooley had continued to allow Silver to use Dooley’s firm as his business address.
The prosecuting barrister said that secret tapes made by the police of Dooley at work showed ‘not a solicitor conducting a proper practice but something more akin to Fagin and Dodger’. A common feature of the high-yield investment transactions, also known as bank instrument frauds, was that only the intermediaries gained and never the investors. The prosecution alleged that in a clear conflict of interest Dooley repeatedly did not pass a warning from his bank manager, Paul Chadwick, on to clients.
Chadwick told the tribunal: ‘I passed on to Mr Dooley that Mr Silver was known to the Midland Bank’s fraud department in the hope that would put him on his guard.’ Chadwick said: ‘Spurious transactions of this nature may be Mafia based.’
That August, shortly after the July 2002 hearing but before the verdict striking off Dooley was announced in September, Dooley was introduced to the Rooneys. Lord Carlile asked Paul Stretford the obvious question: ‘Whose idea was it to go to Kevin Dooley?’
Stretford replied: ‘We came… we came to it as a conclusion that that would be a good person to use for the Rooneys.’
What kind of football agent connects his teenager star with a lawyer like Dooley? Eh?
At the blackmail trial, Wayne Senior opened up a little more. After some heavy lifting by Carlile, he told the court that he was aware Proactive stood to gain up to £1.5 million from the striker’s transfer from Everton to Manchester United.
Asked by the judge about the relevance of this line of questioning, Carlile replied:
What it’s got to do with this case is that it is the defence’s assertion that Mr Stretford was desperate to get Wayne Rooney as his client because he knew he could milk the cow from both ends. If a solicitor was doing that, he would be struck off without a moment’s hesitation.
There is an issue in this case about Paul Stretford’s many interests in Wayne Rooney and the ruthless way in which he approached those interests.
Wayne Senior stepped out of the witness box, to be replaced by Stretford himself. Carlile put the boot in: how come Stretford suggested that the Rooney family consult one of the most bent briefs in Britain for legal advice?
CARLILE: And this was the Mr Dooley who, in August 2002, you knew perfectly well had been up before the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal for, to quote the BBC, ‘a long-running investment scam worth millions of pounds’?
STRETFORD: I was not aware of that, no.
CARLILE: You do regret going to Kevin Dooley with this, don’t you?
STRETFORD: No, I don’t regret that.
CARLILE: He [Dalglish] is a very important part of the setup, isn’t he?
STRETFORD: I think that’s questionable whether he’s very important.
CARLILE: Well, isn’t he a person you would rely on or have relied on regularly for advice?
STRETFORD: I have relied on for regular advice.
CARLILE: Did you stop relying on him for advice after he brought Tommy Adams to a meeting at Le Meridien Hotel in London?
CARLILE: Yes …
STRETFORD: First and foremost, I didn’t know that Kenny Dalglish brought Tommy Adams to a meeting.
It’s difficult to work out what Tommy Adams’s role was or who had invited him to the party. Carlile tried to get to the bottom of it.
CARLILE: Were you aware that Kenny Dalglish has been approached by the police and asked if he would make a signed statement but has refused to come to this trial in any way whatsoever?
STRETFORD: Yes.
CARLILE: …Do you feel let down by him?
STRETFORD: Of course.
CARLILE: …Because he arranged to bring to the meeting at Le Meridien Hotel a notorious gangster who had recently finished a sentence of seven and a half years’ imprisonment for importing cannabis, who happens to take an interest in sport? That’s what it comes to, doesn’t it?
STRETFORD: I can’t answer for Kenny Dalglish but I’m not aware that he did that, no.
Long before the trial started, Stretford had given a statement to the police setting out his recollection of how the big powwow went on 13 November 2002 at Le Meridien Hotel.
Carlile read much of it out in court. Stretford had told the police:
Tony Bruce picked us up and explained that we were meeting at the Meridien Heathrow Airport Hotel. I expressed my absolute lack of knowledge of what or whom we were going to see. Tony told me not to worry, that a friend of his named Tommy would be able to resolve matters and that everybody could then get on with their lives. I was still apprehensive but chose not to share my concerns.
Carlile goaded Stretford: ‘Well, who did you think this Tommy was – Tommy Docherty?’ (A much-loved football player and manager of Chelsea and Manchester United, very much of the old school, whose thick Scottish accent used to provide code-breakers watching post-match interviews on BBC Grandstand with wondrous amusement.)
The defence barrister kept on at Stretford, asking him why he didn’t say: ‘Hey, Kenny, who’s this Tommy we’ve got coming? Tommy who?’
Stretford replied: ‘I wish I had but I didn’t.’
CARLILE: It’s you who brought in the heavy mob, isn’t it?’
STRETFORD: It most certainly was not.
CARLILE: You just knew he had a terrible reputation… a legend, a sort of Kray-type legend almost.
STRETFORD: Yes…
CARLILE: Well, why didn’t you make your excuses and leave?
STRETFORD: Fear, confusion. I just… I didn’t. And you’re right. It’s something that should have… I… I could have done but I didn’t…
CARLILE: You and Kenny and Tommy were the Proactive team, weren’t you?
STRETFORD: No.
The big question is once Stretford was aware that a major gangster was in the room at a matter of vital importance to the future of one of the best footballers in England, why didn’t he just walk out? By staying, whatever the reason, Stretford, representing a figure in the public eye, was tarred with the brush of the Adams gang.
So the first impression of the video nasty, that Hyland and the Bacon brothers were the only villains in the panto, had been overtaken by more evidence. Stretford was mixing with some real baddies – and who could be more offside than Kevin Dooley and Tommy Adams?
Carlile went on to read out the bulk of Stretford’s statement on what happened at the meeting:
He [Tommy Adams] explained that he was merely there to arbitrate and out of courtesy to Kenny would see that nobody got out of hand. He said not to worry. He was sure this matter could be resolved. Kenny looked a little surprised and didn’t seem to understand where Tommy was coming from. Tommy explained that someone had been wronged and that the matter needed rectifying. The previous agent, said Tommy, had looked after Rooney since he was young and needed some consideration. Kenny and I both protested that Wayne and his parents were entitled to make their own decisions and that we had behaved entirely appropriately. I also told Tommy that in about a month the agreement ran out anyway. It was made clear to us that the matter needed to be resolved and this was the best way to do it.
Why Dalglish looked a little surprised will remain, like the Mona Lisa’s smile, an enigma. Dalglish wasn’t telling. His unwillingness to give a statement disappointed Stretford. It is also disappointing because it is well-nigh impossible to understand how Proactive allowed their then employee to get anywhere near Tommy Adams. As for what Tommy Adams thought he was doing, who knows, but he would have been justified in demanding a fee for putting himself out for the parties – that, effectively, is what lawyers do all the time – and that subtle (and potentially expensive) change of role by the gangster would account for the look of surprise on Dalglish’s face. And the problem with gangsters is that you can’t argue with them. Dalglish’s role in this murky affair is hard to fathom, not least because he did not appear in court. The reputation of this once great player was another victim of the time when a gangster brushed against the career of the rising star of British football.
Cynics point out that the gangsters have a liking for ‘taxing’. Organised criminals, like the rest of us, are deeply envious of the absurd sums of money society pays the footballers, so if they can cream off a bit of money from an idiot soccer star by sorting out trouble, why not? But in this case, the gangster wasn’t planning to ‘tax’ the footballer direct, but may have wanted to tax his two agents, past and present, who were still squabbling about who owned the star. Was Tommy Adams gunning for a slice of the Rooney bonanza? Eh?
Back at Warrington Crown Court, Carlile was gearing up for his knockout blow. Immediately after he had read out Stretford’s version of what Tommy Adams was up to, he started ripping the stuffing out of the prosecution case. To understand Carlile’s attack, you need to know the precise FIFA rules against agents poaching talent from their rivals.
Clause IV of FIFA’s Code proclaims: ‘The players’ agent shall … respect the contractual relations of his professional colleagues and shall refrain from any action that could entice clients away from other parties.’ In other words, no poaching, and, in particular, if a player is under contract with one agent, no contracts with another agent.
CARLILE: And you were representing to Tommy Adams and others present that up to that point no representation agreement had been entered into between Proactive and Wayne Rooney as you told us earlier this morning?
STRETFORD: Yes.
CARLILE: Would you like to think about that just once more, Mr Stretford? I put it to you that a representation agreement had been entered into between Wayne Rooney and his parents and Proactive well before the end of Mr McIntosh’s contract. Is that right or wrong?
STRETFORD: The only representation agreement that was put in place was for his commercial image rights.
CARLILE: That’s a lie, isn’t it, Mr Stretford.
STRETFORD: Not as far as I am aware, no.
Carlile produced a copy of a Proactive document, signed by Wayne Rooney Junior, Wayne Rooney Senior, Jeanette Rooney and Stretford, and dated January 2003. So what? Rooney’s contract with McIntosh’s Proform/X8 expired on 12 December 2002, and Stretford was wholly within his rights to offer contracts after that date.
Carlile pointed out that the text proclaimed that this was a ‘variation agreement’ and said: ‘You can’t have a variation agreement unless there’s an agreement to vary, Mr Stretford, can you?’ to which the agent said no, adding, a few moments later, that it was a variation of image rights. They are not covered by FIFA’s Clause IV.
The defence barrister said that the variation agreement, signed in January 2003, was from an (earlier) general (or on-pitch, footballing) representation agreement and asked: ‘What was the date?’
STRETFORD: But there was no general representation agreement.
CARLILE: (delivering the killer blow) Then why does it say in this document that there was one dated 17 July 2002?
STRETFORD: (at a loss) I can’t answer that.
Game over. The following day, Monday 11 October 2004, Hedgecoe addressed the court.
Your Honour, Mr Paul Stretford gave evidence last week about the existence or otherwise of contracts entered into between Proactive Ltd and Wayne Rooney prior to the termination of the Proform contract on 11 December 2002. Following the adjournment on Friday last, two representation agreements pre-dating 11 December were disclosed which seriously called into question the evidence of Paul Stretford.
Hedgecoe stated the Crown’s position succinctly: ‘We do not feel able to rely upon Paul Stretford as a witness in this case.’
Judge Hale summed it up: ‘Mr Stretford says there was no footballing contract. That’s what he said to Lord Carlile on Friday morning and, 19 September 2002, a contract.’
Even though there was compelling evidence on videotape of Hyland and the Bacons monstering Stretford, the blackmail case collapsed because the Crown could not rely upon the word of its star witness.
In June 2005 the Football Association hit Stretford with nine charges, effectively of bringing the game into disrepute. The FA charged Stretford, one, that he ‘failed to protect the interests of Mr Wayne Rooney’; two, that he failed to respect the interests of third parties; three, that he ‘did not refrain from actions that could entice clients away from other parties’; four, that he breached FIFA players’ agents’ rules by agreeing an eight-year deal when the legal maximum is two; five, that he failed to register the 17 July 2002 agreement with the FA; six, that he failed to register the 19 September 2002 agreement with the FA; seven, that he failed to register the 14 December 2002 agreement with the FA; eight, that he made ‘a false and/or misleading witness statement to the police’ in R v. Hyland, Bacon and Bacon; nine, that he provided ‘false and/or misleading testimony to Warrington Crown Court’ in R v. Hyland, Bacon and Bacon.
Stretford denied the lot and, convinced that he had been wronged, set out to challenge the FA’s right to hold a disciplinary hearing against him. Rooney said in a written statement: ‘I have informed the FA as to how I came to be represented by Paul Stretford. I was happy then and I still am.’
Len Capeling in the Liverpool Daily Post reacted to the FA’s charges, some might say, rather sourly.
Paul Stretford need have no worries. The FA’s record in pursuing agents they believe have transgressed is absolutely abysmal. Admittedly, they do have Mr Stretford’s bizarre evidence in the High Court to harass him with, but a half-decent brief should ease playful Paul back on to his bed of banknotes. Also on Mr Stretford’s team is Wayne Rooney, though some might see that as more of a hindrance. The accused promises a stern rebuttal of all charges. Let wrist-slapping commence.
One can only read this kind of cynical comment in the newspaper and deplore it – but does no one trust the great and the good any more?
After the collapse of the blackmail trial Proform launched a civil suit for damages against Proactive. In the summer of 2006, Judge Hodge ruled that Proform had no chance of success against Proactive because they could not enforce their 2000 contract with the Rooneys because Wayne was a legal minor when it was signed.
In 2006 I rang Lord Carlile, Hyland’s QC, and asked him about his client. He took a deep breath and said that Hyland ‘is a typical Scouse character. You should meet him.’ Ever cautious, I asked Carlile: ‘Do I need to bring a shotgun?’ And he laughed and said no. Then I rang Hyland’s office. A guttural voice with clipped diphthongs answered the phone and said in Scouse so thick you could butter your bread with it that Mr Hyland wasn’t there. Mr Hyland was in a meeting. I rang off and rang back and rang off and rang back, and each time I missed him.
Playing phone tag with a man who has been on trial for demanding money with menaces is no less boring than playing phone tag with your bank manager. Eventually, I got through to the big man and blurted out that I had spoken to Lord Carlile and he said that I should get in touch, and that he, Mr Hyland, was a typical Scouse character.
A long paused followed. The Hood was weighing me up. (The Thunderbirds theme tune started playing in my head.)
‘…and Lord Carlile said there was no need for a shotgun.’
A deep, breathy chuckle – one part the Godfather, one part Mr Wheezy, the squeaky penguin from Toy Story who has mislaid his squeak – reverberated down the line. On and on he laughed. Whatever else people say about John Hyland, he has a sense of humour. I told him that I was hanging about outside a pub on Liverpool’s Victoria Street, and he said he would pick me up.
It was always going to be a Mercedes. Not quite brand new, not quite top of the range. But Hyland wasn’t going to be seen dead in a Nissan Micra.
In the flesh, the Hood’s eyes didn’t light up bright yellow and he didn’t try to hypnotise me, as he does in Thunderbirds. In other respects, he lived up to my expectations. He circled the city as if he owned it, which he might well do as far I know. Traffic lights turned green as his Merc neared. It felt as though the Liver Birds themselves did a little curtsy as Mr Hyland passed by the Dock Road. Every now and then he would slow down and wave and shout hello to an acquaintance. Some wore suits, some did not. They tended to have narrow foreheads, be wary and built like brick lavatory outhouses – but what do I know? They were probably all middle managers for the Prudential Assurance Company.
Hyland told me that he used to be a boxer, had fought at Olympic level until he lost to a Korean, and that he knew the Rooneys and the McLoughlins. He said that he had even fought with Wayne’s dad in the old days.
‘Who won?’
‘Don’t ask.’
‘Go on, who won?’
‘I did. Twice.’
We mourned the slow death of boxing.
‘It’s the only sport that’s going backwards. That’s the media for you. I told them that they were wrong, but they wouldn’t listen.’
I ummed and aahed, hoping that he would deduce from my muttering that I somehow agreed with him.
Near Lime Street he pulled the car over. A sinisterish-looking man (or so I thought, anyway) with a Tesco plastic bag approached the car. This was it, I feared. The man proffered a gift. It could have been an Uzi inside the plastic bag, for all I knew, then I remembered that all of Liverpool wasn’t like Croxteth.
‘That’s me brother,’ said Hyland. ‘It’s my birthday.’
I didn’t sing ‘Happy Birthday’ but we were getting on fine and dandy. Hyland sashayed the Merc through the city centre and we parked with a degree of aplomb outside the Radisson Hotel. He deftly took a laminated sign and plonked it on the dash. ‘Valet parking for the Radisson’, it proclaimed. I smarted, having got myself a £100 parking fine in London while simply picking up a cat from a friend’s. But parking tickets are meant for people like you and me, and not the John Hylands of this world.
He led me into the wide-open prairie of the hotel lobby, where the staff greeted him with the utmost respect, and we met his daughter – who was not just likeable, but lovely – and a used car dealer – who gave me a good tip on when to buy a second-hand Saab soft-top: ‘Go for a wet weekend in November when they know that if they sell it, it will be in their Christmas bonus.’
Hyland led the way to the bar. Again, there was no farting about waiting to get served. A flunkey shimmied over at Mach 3 and in no time I was downing a pint. Hyland drank black tea, while daughter and car dealer made small talk. There were so many agendas whizzing around the bar that it made my head dizzy. I wanted to dig as much information out of Hyland as I humanly could without earning his dislike; he wanted to show me who was boss – and yet that he was one of the good guys; and the car dealer almost certainly wanted to sell someone – anyone – a car. Hyland’s daughter seemed to be the only one of us who was there for the hell of it.
Amber bubbles winked at the brim of my pint as the small talk washed this way and that. Hyland was beginning to suspect that I didn’t know Lord Carlile from Adam, and that he had been conned. He began to clam up. To keep the conversation drifting on, I got on to the subject of Roman Abramovich. I had made a film about the Russian plutocrat and Hyland was fascinated by the story of how an orphan from the cold, cold north had ended up one of Britain’s richest men. The best bit, for Hyland, was the story that one of Abramovich’s goons had told a friend about the nature of British football.
Abramovich and his friends were honest entrepreneurs, but they worked in what some would describe as a robust business environment. The Great Patriotic Aluminium Wars of the 1990s saw dozens of corpses pile up – managers, lawyers, journalists – before Roman and Co. took over one of the biggest smelters and peace descended. So Hyland was amused to hear that one of the Russians had told friends that ‘they were shocked, shocked, shocked at how bent British football is’.
And John Hyland broke into a huge grin, and nodded his head, and started to cackle with laughter, and then he took a phone call, didn’t like what he heard, started scowling at me, and I made my excuses and left.