Meet the Lags XI

Meet Britains baddest football team. You cant play for them unless you are a criminal or have at least had a brush with the law.

Among the line-up of Black Sheep FC is goalkeeper Keith Phillips, 25, caught handling drugs, and defender Dave Jenner, 23, arrested for drunkenly tackling a police officer on a night out.

Midfielder Tommy Lewis, 19, has been nicked for running from the scene of a crime and top striker Sean Butler, 23, has been locked up for scoring drugs.

And star player Carl Lewis, 31, nicknamed Gazza by his teammates because of his boozing, has been jailed five times for offences including kidnap.

He said: Being in the team has turned my life around.

Players in the non-league side from the Welsh village of Llandrinio, Powys, could not play for local teams because of their criminal past, so they formed Black Sheep FC to get their lives back on track.

But their bad-boy ways have now transferred to the pitch. Last season they were hit with 64 yellow and 18 red cards. It has led to them being fined s2,000, which they must pay if they want to carry on playing.

But the team claims that the red and yellow card haul is down mainly to one player, Joey Smith, 18, who suffers from Tourettes syndrome.

But referees dont believe his four-letter rants are down to his condition. Two other players have been given 100-day bans for beating up opponents.

Several members of the team have arrived for matches in police cars after being arrested the night before. And one will start this season wearing an electronic tag, so police can track him. Team manager Rob Scott has also been banned twice from the touchline, once for launching a karate kick at a spectator.

But he says the team, which plays in Division Two of the JT Hughes League in Mid-Wales, is vital in keeping the boys out of jail.

Rob, 42, who has spent two months inside for contempt of court and has a string of convictions for crimes including actual bodily harm, set up Black Sheep FC because no team would give him a game.

I quickly found many other guys living near me had the same problem, he said.

But a lot of them were superb players whose lives had gone off the rails. So I made it a condition that players who joined had to have a criminal past.

Despite their disciplinary problems the team have been a huge success. They finished fourth in the league last season and might have won it if they hadnt been docked 15 points for fielding an unregistered player.

nick.owens@sundaymirror.co.uk

Anthony Davies: An Apology

In the online version of the Sunday Mirror story entitled "The Lags X1" about a team of footballers, Black Sheep FC we published a team photograph including a picture of a goalkeeper described as goalkeeper Keith Phillips who had been caught handling drugs. In fact, this was an earlier picture of the team which we have since replaced with the correct version. The original picture was in fact of Anthony Davies who has never been convicted of any offence. We offer him our sincere apologies.