So, looks like it was true all along. None of the judges believed his story, and v unusually overturned a jury's decision, an amazing thing in this land of ours.

I felt guilty myself when he won his case v the Sun, having thought all along he was a bad'un only to be surprised when he won & got £85k.

Now? I think he & Fashanu were both guilty as sin. And it's not THEIR game but OURS that they sold down the river.

-- Anonymous, January 18, 2001

Answers

Do you think he would have stopped the goals that Cole scored? They were hardly difficult chances for Cole, not forgetting how many goals he scored that season. Grobelaar may have been guilty but, I don't think that was one of the games.

-- Anonymous, January 18, 2001

Interesting point, Kegsy, nufc.com made a similar observation. This is a huge story in point of fact. How much corruption is there in English football? I guess like most of us I've always regarded our game as quite clean but the Grobbelaar case has me wondering. Remember Everton staying up on the last day a few seasons against Wimbledon, Hans Segers in goal? Are there a few more rotten apples out there?

-- Anonymous, January 19, 2001

and we haven't even mentioned the match officials yet....;)

-- Anonymous, January 19, 2001

Apparently one of the games was a 3:3 with us......and he said he fukcde up actually my making a "mistake" save.

-- Anonymous, January 19, 2001

We all know it was true , you just have to check out the video evidence , hes as guilty as OJ Simpson.

However how can the Judge Overturn the verdict without new evidence, this speaks more about our justice system than Grobbalar , who was my hero years ago even tho i was a toon fan.

Any legal eagles explain this decision about overturning an already finished case, I for exapmle recently went to court over an assault and was told that the Guy who commited the assault could tell the Judge that he did it but the judge cannot use that, he can only use what said is under oath and in court.

-- Anonymous, January 19, 2001

So Grobbelar is a cheat.

Well the football authorities will have to make an example of him if the game is to be cleaned up. The only job I can see left for him in football is manager, say at Leeds or Spurs.

-- Anonymous, January 19, 2001

This case is totally bazarre.
We have a judicial process that is based on the citizen's immutable right to a trial by a jury of the his peers. How on earth can a cabal of judges be allowed to subsequently overturn the jury's considered verdict?

I simply don't understand the presumed validity of this process at all - and how can anyone now realitically view Grobbelaer's guilt or innocence. Seems to me the guy has been 'guilty until proven guilty' - irrespective of how we got there!

I find it all distasteful, and deeply worrying constitutionally. I'd really like to hear Dougal's views on the constitutional appropriateness of this process.

-- Anonymous, January 19, 2001

Not my speciaiist subject, but when exactly does anyone have a right of appeal? The process is obviously in place to allow an appeal - under what circumstances?

Surely the appeal was against the libel, initially proven against The Sun. Could not a ruling have been made by the appeal judges that The Sun did not libel BG? But presumably, if what they said wasn't libellous, then it must have had some truth - or must it?

Can't you say (or write) something which is open to interpretation? Well, in the case of The Sun, hardly! I guess they have to be pretty obvious with your comments otherwise their readers wouldn't understand what they're saying.

-- Anonymous, January 20, 2001

I don't fully understand these things but I thought the court of appeal was always just a number of judges reviewing the evidence rather than a further trial by jury. The ultimate appeal, of course, is to the House of Lords, where there is no question of a "jury" in the accepted sense of the word, sitting.

I thought the suggestion that the jury had been blinded by the "celebrity" status of the accused was quite interesting in this case. It is similar to the OJ case where he was found not guilty by a jury despite what appeared to an outsider to be a hugely damning case against him. Are you more likely to get away with it if your famous? If the answer to that question is "yes" then perhaps the jury system isn't all it's cracked up to be.

With regard to Grobelar, I mentioned on another thread the article which Patrick Collins wrote about him in today's Mail on Sunday. I like Patrick Collins and I find myself agreeing with him nine times out of ten. This was no exception. He obviously dislikes Grobelar with a will and included in his piece a couple of quotes from the player's autobiography which showed him up as nothing more than a racist.

I think he has got exactly what he deserved - the evidence against him in the original trial seemed totally overwhelming. I could never understand how he got off - I bet a lot of you felt the same at the time.

-- Anonymous, January 21, 2001

"....perhaps the jury system isn't all it's cracked up to be".

That's as may be Jacko, but it is the system, until we consciously adopt something different. While not being an expert in our judicial system, it seems that we are increasingly deciding when it is appropriate to allow a citizen to exercise his supposed right to be tried by "a jury of his peers". And now it seems that a cabal of appointed officials are able, at the drop of a hat, to overturn a jury's considered verdict, even when someone has been 'permitted' access to one.

Something smells about this case, and it's not Grobs shorts, or perhaps in this case I should say his 'briefs'.

Incidentally, his views of other races, however disagreeable, shouldn't be an issue in this particular case.

-- Anonymous, January 21, 2001