Thank God for Dave Whelan doing the right thing and sacking Marlon King

By Oliver Holt

Published 23:00 29/10/09

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Cocooned in its bubble of greed and self-interest, it is rare these days for football to do the right thing.

But yesterday, at last, Wigan Athletic chairman Dave Whelan stood up and said that enough was enough.

When Wigan forward Marlon King was convicted of sexual assault and actual bodily harm at Southwark Crown Court and jailed for 18 months, Whelan did not hesitate.

He did not slither and writhe, he did not hide behind vague promises or financial penalties, he did not try to protect an asset.

He did what any right-thinking employer would do. He said that King would be sacked. He would never play for Wigan again.

It might seem an obvious course of action, especially after sickening details emerged in court this week of King’s assault on a woman in a London club last December.

But too often in recent years, football has tried to distance itself from its obligations to society.

Too often, it has given the impression that it is happy to indulge its players’ arrogance and their apparent belief that they are above the law.

When, from time to time, players have been found guilty of criminal acts and besmirched the reputations of the vast majority of decent, honest footballers, their clubs have often pretended not to see.

Think of Joey Barton and the series of violent acts that have punctuated his life while he has been a footballer.

Barton stubbed out a cigar on a team-mate while he was at Manchester City several years ago and the club did not sack him.

He battered his team-mate Ousmane Dabo to a pulp in a training ground fracas and they did not sack him then.

Instead, they sold him. They put a sum of money ahead of doing the right thing. They said, effectively, that football played by different rules.

Newcastle United did the same thing when Barton committed a vicious assault on a man in Liverpool city centre.

They didn’t sack him. They couldn’t bring themselves to lose a multi-million pound commodity. They knew he might be able to help them in their battle against relegation last season. Money talked. Again.

It has been this way too often. Leeds United did not sack Jonathan Woodgate when he was convicted of affray after he was part of a mob that had chased Asian student Sarfraz Najeib through Leeds city centre and left him beaten and bloodied on the street.

Whelan could have wriggled out of his responsibilities, too. He could have told himself he might be able to get a couple of million for King when he is released, probably in less than a year.

But how would King’s victim have felt if Wigan had stood by their man. How would she have felt if Wigan had put profit first?

We know the answer to that. If Whelan had not acted, football would have been laughing at society again.

That’s why the Wigan chairman deserves our thanks this morning. Out of a brutal and disturbing case, a little good has emerged.

Football has shown that sometimes it does have the guts to put its responsibilities above its profits.

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