THREE men involved in violence after troubled flared in last season’s Premiership match between Liverpool FC and Wigan Athletic escaped jail yesterday.
They caused trouble at the JJB stadium, in Wigan, after Israeli midfielder Yossi Bena-youn had scored a late winner for Liverpool.
The trio received eight months’ imprisonment, sus-pended for two years, and were told by a judge that they had been teetering on the brink of going straight to jail.
Judge Brian Lewis, who watched CCTV footage of the incident, told Mark Harrison, David McCarthy and Noel Ward they had acted as volunteers, and not in self-defence.
“You got yourselves involved and the dangers of such an incident can hardly be over-stated,” he said.
Liverpool Crown Court heard that the incident happened in the east stand of Wigan’s home ground, the JJB Stadium, which contained men, women and families with young children.
“Not only should young child-ren not have to see such dis-graceful behaviour in our so-called civilised society, but in that volatile situation there is a terrible risk of a crowd disaster as we have tragically seen in the past,” said Judge Lewis.
He estimated the disturbance involved 30 – 40 people, and each of the defendants had punched out once or twice.
“Taken in isolation, what each of you did was not particularly serious, but when that is multi-plied 30-40 times it becomes very serious and threatening and a dangerous position in that tightly-packed area.”
He said: “You rushed in to inflict violence on people who were no threat to you.”
Suspending the prison sen-tences on the trio, who all look-ed relieved, Judge Lewis said that he did so because they had pleaded guilty and were all in employment.
Ward, 28, and McCarthy, 27, have a previous conviction in-volving football trouble and Judge Lewis imposed four-year-football banning orders. He imposed a similar order on Harrison, 27, for three years.
All three also have to carry out 150 hours’ unpaid work and pay £250 prosecution costs.
Ward, of Willow Road, Harrison, of Ormskirk Road, and McCarthy, of Saxthorpe Close, all in Wigan, pleaded guilty to affray.
Karen Brooks, prosecuting, said the men were season ticket-holders and sitting in the east stand for the game on September 29 last year attended by 24,311 people. The stand is primarily for home supporters, but some of the 5,064 away fans were also there.
Ten minutes before the final whistle, Liverpool’s Yossi Benayoun scored, which led their fans to celebrate and disorder broke out which lasted about five minutes.
