Woodgate avoids jail, Bowyer cleared

Leeds United footballer Jonathan Woodgate avoided a jail sentence on Friday after being found guilty of affray before a brutal attack on an Asian student in January 2000.

The 21-year-old was ordered to do 100 hours of community service. Team mate Lee Bowyer, 24, walked free from Hull Crown Court after being found not guilty of causing grievous bodily harm with intent, the more serious charge, and affray.

Woodgate's friend Paul Clifford was sentenced to six years jail after being found guilty of causing grievous bodily harm with intent and affray. Woodgate was found not guilty of causing grievous bodily harm.

Najeib, then 19, suffered a broken leg and a fractured cheek and nose after a gang of men attacked him. He stayed in hospital for eight days and his eyebrow had to be glued together.

The court was told Clifford had bitten Sarfraz Najeib in the cheek as he lay unconscious on the ground in Leeds city centre.

Woodgate, who has visibly aged over the past few months, and Bowyer are two of the most promising players in England and they will have to pay legal costs of around one million pounds ($1.45 million) each. A trial earlier this year had to be abandoned.

"It has been obvious to everyone that you have suffered through the currency of this trial and that is etched upon your face. It is right you are not over-confident and brash," the trial judge Justice Henriques told Woodgate.

Their club, one of the most famous in England, said both would be available for selection now the trial is over.

England's Football Association said it would consider the verdicts. The FA had said neither player could represent England before the legal process was completed.

Another of Woodgate's friends, Neale Caveney, was found guilty of affray and also sentenced to 100 hours community service. The four denied all the charges.

"These six months for each of you must have been traumatic. I have little doubt if you see a chase setting off at night, you will keep well away," the judge told Woodgate and Caveney.

THANKS OFFICIALS
Bowyer thanked Leeds club officials and fans for supporting him during his two-year ordeal.

"I would like to thank everybody who stuck by me - I won't forget that," he told reporters outside the court.

A first trial of the four was stopped in April after an interview in a Sunday newspaper with Najeib's father. The second trial started on October 15.

Leeds United chairman Peter Ridsdale told a news conference the players would have been sacked if they had been found guilty of involvement in the attack. He said Woodgate would be disciplined for his drunken night out.

"Jonathan is a footballer of outstanding talent and outstanding ability who wishes to put this episode of his life behind him and resume his professional career as soon as possible," Woodgate's lawyer Nick Freeman said.

The victim, now 21, lives with his parents in a small house guarded by nine security cameras. He is still so nervous he rarely dares to go out and his father revealed the family's car had its tyres slashed last week.

In the 1994/95 season France's Eric Cantona was banned for eight months by the Football Association and fined 10,000 pounds ($14,350) for a "Kung Fu" attack on a Crystal Palace spectator who had been goading him.

A two-week jail sentence imposed on Cantona was changed to 120 hours of community service.

CAREERS BLIGHTED
Centre back Woodgate played once for England under former coach Kevin Keegan, while Bowyer was the country's most expensive teenager when Leeds paid 2.6 million pounds ($3.80 million) to sign him from Charlton Athletic in 1996.

Woodgate has started only one game for Leeds since the first trial started in February.

Bowyer continued playing for Leeds during the first trial, even scoring the winning goal in a Champions League match against Anderlecht the day after it began on February 12, and had a superb season in 2000/2001.

He would almost certainly have played for England, and perhaps be heading for the 2002 World Cup finals, but for the FA's decision on the pair's availability.

NIGHT OUT
Clifford, a former amateur boxing champion, and Caveney came down from Woodgate's native north-east of England for a night out in Leeds on January 11.

They drank heavily, visited a lap-dancing club and then left a night club in central Leeds when another friend was thrown out for being drunk.

They came out at the same time as a group of Asian students including Najeib, now 21, and his elder brother Shahzad. A punch was thrown by one of the students and a gang chased the Asians down a street called Mill Hill where Najeib was cornered.

The court was told he was thrown against a plastic dustbin, and kicked and punched unconscious.

The judge in the first trial said "spiteful group retaliation" not racism was the motive for the attack and the judge in the second trial also said there was no racial element to the attack.

But Sarfraz's father Muhamed Najeib said on Friday he remained convinced the attack had been racially motivated.