Ah this is brilliant
2 Likes
+2
âThe damage has never properly been repaired.â The night that changed everything for Woodgate, Bowyer, Najeib and Leeds
By Daniel Taylor 3h ago
14 
They used to tell a story about Lee Bowyer during the days at Leeds United, in the Peter Ridsdale era, when the club went on a spectacular rise before an even more spectacular fall.
Or, to be more accurate, it was Dick Wright, the clubâs press officer, who used to regale everyone with the details, swearing blind it was true whenever the story was repeated on their Champions League excursions.
He was a genial old chap, Dick, and a fine raconteur. He was so popular with the players that Lucas Radebe wrote one of the obituaries when he died a few years ago, and one of his favourite anecdotes was the time Bowyer was having difficulties with the menu at the hotel where the team was staying.
Dick recommended the halibut steak but, halfway through the meal, he noticed the player looking at his plate suspiciously.
Bowyer seemed unsure, to say the least, about his choice of food. Dick, who was Yorkshire through and through, would always attempt a south London accent for the killer line.
ââEre, Dick. This steakâs a bit fishy, isnât it?â
The staff at Leeds had a few stories about âBowâ during those years.
They were told with a certain amount of affection but mostly the kind of respect that always comes easily when a player has the ability to shape football matches and, in turn, determine the mood of his club.
Yet it is also fair to say there were not many people behind the scenes at Elland Road who would have put down Bowyer as a future manager â and even fewer, perhaps, who might have imagined the scene that will unfold at The Valley on Saturday.
Lee Bowyer versus Jonathan Woodgate: once team-mates at Leeds, now the managers of Charlton Athletic and Middlesbrough respectively, meeting for the first time in opposite dugouts. Two men with so much shared history from a time when Leeds were the coming force of English football. Key figures, on and off the pitch, during that wild graph of exhilarating highs and excruciating lows.
Middlesbrough manager Jonathan Woodgate in November (Photo: Alex Dodd â CameraSport via Getty Images)
The highs for Leeds peaked with a Champions League semi-final in 2001, even though it was to end in regret. Leeds played Valencia, drawing 0-0 in the first leg, and before the return game at the Mestalla the players shaved their heads, Full Metal Jacket-style, as a sign of the spirit and togetherness that bonded them all. They lost 3-0 and the report in Marca likened them to âthe poor Englishmen who invented football 15 centuries ago when they cut off a Vikingâs head, put it in a bag and started to kick it aroundâ.
Lee Bowyer, manager of Charlton Athletic (Photo: James Chance/Getty Images)
Except that, of course, tells only part of the story from the years that Bowyer and Woodgate spent as team-mates, comrades and â in the eyes of the police â accomplices.
Bowyer did not play in Valencia because he had been banned by UEFA after television cameras caught him stamping on an opponent in the first leg. His absence was a grievous setback for Leeds but nobody could say it was completely out of character. Bowyer did have that spiteful edge.
Woodgate, meanwhile, was nursing what the club described as an ankle injury, which had kept him out for the previous three months. The symptoms included dramatic weight loss, hollowed cheeks and dark rings appearing beneath his eyes. Nobody ever saw him limping because, in truth, there was no ankle injury. It was just easier for Leeds to explain it that way rather than admitting the real reason for his absence, which was that the threat of prison had left him falling apart.
An injury was concocted because the truth would have meant returning to the events of January 12, 2000 and the night out that changed everything. It is the 20th anniversary next month and when The Athletic spent time with Ridsdale, the former Leeds chairman, recently, he said of his old club that âthe damage has never been properly repairedâ.
Sarfraz Najeib was left unconscious, lying in his own blood. His cheekbone was smashed, his left leg fractured and his nose broken in three places. There were teeth marks embedded in his face, as well as the imprint of a shoe. Sarfraz had a wound to the back of his head that needed a dozen stitches. Witnesses thought he might be dead when his attackers, who had formed a semi-circle around him, fled the dimly lit Leeds side-street where they had beaten him within an inch of his life.
Sarfraz, a 19-year-old student, was in hospital for a week. The victim had been in Majestyk nightclub with his brother, Shahzad, and some friends when they spilled into the street at the same time as a group from the VIP section, where a party of Leeds United footballers had been drinking.
Woodgate, by his own admission, was smashed out of his head after a marathon drinking binge. He had a group of friends with him from Middlesbrough who were all in the same state, including one who was described as âacting like he was 10 menâ. Their night had involved necking pints of vodka cocktails, various bits of alcohol-fuelled aggro and a visit to a lap-dancing bar called DV8.
A punch was thrown and the pack instinct set in. There was a chase and, finally, a catch. The fleeing Sarfraz had stumbled over the pavement in a street called Mill Hill. Before he could get to his feet he had been set upon, thrown against a dustbin, punched, kicked and beaten senseless.
Sarfraz Najeib leaves Hull Crown Court after giving evidence in the trial in 2001. (Photo: PA Images via Getty Images)
Even when he was unconscious, the attack continued. Paul Clifford, from Woodgateâs group, was seen bending down to bite his face and, in Ridsdaleâs words, âshake him like a dog with meat in its jawsâ. The victimâs father, Muhammed, would talk later about his sonâs head being kicked around âlike a footballâ. Shahzad, who was also viciously attacked, witnessed it all.
Two decades on, Ridsdale is now a prominent boardroom figure at Preston North End but will probably always be associated for the years at Elland Road when Leeds became English footballâs soap opera and the manager, David OâLeary, noted at one point that âthe only people we havenât upset lately are NATOâ.
Ridsdale was the chairman who had assembled a vibrant, developing team only to find the club linked to a vicious street attack that was played out in the media as whites vs Asians. It began the spiral of events that led to the team unravelling. It blew a gaping hole in Ridsdaleâs relationship with OâLeary, the manager who had taken Leeds to the cusp of a Champions League final. And it left a sinister cloud hanging over the club, particularly when it came out after the court case that the victim had heard a shout of âDo you want some, Paki?â
Imran Khan, the solicitor who represented the family of Stephen Lawrence, the black teenager who was stabbed to death in a racially motivated attack in south-east London in 1993, took up the case on behalf of the Najeibs.
Neville Lawrence, Stephenâs father, was among a delegation, including representatives of Kick It Out and the National Civil Rights Movement, who turned up at Elland Road to tell Ridsdale, face to face, that Leeds had to take a moral stand and suspend the players. The FA, after all, had decided it would not consider Bowyer or Woodgate for England selection until the trial was over. But Ridsdale let them play on, taking the view they were innocent until proven guilty. The backlash was considerable.
âOne boozy night has brought this club down,â OâLeary would say. âFrom being the second-favourite club of many people, we suddenly seem to have become the most hated club in the country.â
A letter in the Daily Mail put it another way. âLeeds footballers wearing gloves isnât a fashion statement,â it read. âItâs so they donât leave any fingerprints.â
For Ridsdale, the overwhelming feeling when he looks back now is sadness.
He was in Hong Kong, on a stopover from a business trip to Australia, when the call arrived. It was the clubâs head of PR, Liz Dimitrijevic, and she was ringing to say the Yorkshire Evening Post had been tipped off that Bowyer and Woodgate were to be arrested.
âI wanted to make sure you were aware but thereâs no need to return early because Iâve spoken to the two players,â Dimitrevic told him. âThey say itâs got nothing to do with them and thereâs nothing to worry about.â
The players claimed they were not even there. But that was not true. Woodgate was part of the drunken chase, Bowyer not too far behind. Bowyer, who had been drinking with a separate group earlier in the evening, came out of the nightclub just after the trouble started. The doormen watched them running across City Square, past the statue of the Black Prince and disappearing in the darkness along the main thoroughfare of Boar Lane.
Woodgate would be found guilty of affray, though not the more serious charge of grievous bodily harm. He was spared prison but ordered to undertake 100 hours of community service. Bowyer was cleared of all charges, even though he would later pay ÂŁ170,000 in an out-of-court settlement to the Najeib brothers (without accepting liability for their injuries). Another Leeds player, Tony Hackworth, was acquitted on the judgeâs direction. The prosecution had been unable to prove that anyone bar Clifford, who was jailed for six years, was responsible for Sarfrazâs injuries. And a fourth player, Michael Duberry, was found not guilty on a charge of perverting the course of justice. Duberry had lied in police interviews to cover for Woodgate. Under the weight of his conscience and fearing for his future, he then gave evidence in court against his friend and team-mate.
Leeds were also to learn that glaciers can move quicker than the British criminal system. From start to finish, the whole process took 23 months, including one collapsed trial, before the jury at Hull Crown Court returned the verdicts for Bowyer and Woodgate. The backlash continued much longer. And what became clear in all that time was that the two players were wired very differently â one playing out of his skin, the other retreating into a shell.
âLee played the best football of his career during that period,â Ridsdale says. âWoody, on the other hand, lost so much weight because of the stress. He went from being the best young centre-half in the country, a Rolls-Royce player who used to purr through games, to being a shadow of his former self. The more I saw of him, the thinner he was. I was shocked by how pale and gaunt he was. I didnât personally (make up the ankle injury), but the truth was he just wasnât fit to play football, whereas âBowâ was the opposite.â
Even when Bowyer was unable to train, standing in the dock to hear the evidence against him, he would race back for evening matches and play magnificently. Opposition crowds taunted him with chants of âGoing downâ but he played as though he did not have a care in the world. As Woodgate faded away, barely speaking to anyone, Bowyer was named Leedsâ Player of the Year.
Ridsdale tells one story about Woodgate breaking down in tears when his father, Alan, became involved. Father and son wept together as they realised the seriousness of the situation. Bowyer, on the other hand, scarcely blinked.
âThey were very different characters,â Ridsdale says. âLee was from a tough background in London. The only time I have ever seen him close to tears was the night we played Everton away. He was in Hull for the court case and weâd arranged a helicopter to get him to the game. âNever again,â he said, âIâve never been so scared in my life.â That was the closest Iâve ever seen to Lee being unnerved.â
In Ridsdaleâs 2007 autobiography he summed it up another way: âThere were no tears from Lee,â he wrote. âIâm not even sure he has tear ducts. He is a tough character.â
What is not so easy to work out, all these years on, is what the two former team-mates make of one another, away from the usual press-conference politeness. Will there be a warm embrace on the touchline on Saturday? Or just a cursory handshake, the briefest touch of flesh on flesh, and no words exchanged?
Their relationship was certainly strained during the court case, with barely a word exchanged and Woodgate standing alongside his friends from Middlesbrough rather than his team-mate.
âIt was a bit awkward for a period of time between the two of them,â Nigel Martyn, the teamâs former goalkeeper, tells The Athletic . âMichael Duberry got embroiled in it, too. He changed his story because he wasnât going to prison for somebody else, and I donât blame him for that. So it was a bit awkward between the three of them. Then the results came out (in court) and it was like they were best mates again. From the outside, itâs like, âHow can you go from not speaking to being mates again?ââ
Did Martyn envisage either Bowyer or Woodgate becoming managers?
âWoody, no.â
And Bowyer?
âNot really. Although I spoke to Lee when I was at a Leeds game. We had both been invited and we were watching together. He was coaching at Charlton and it was like a different guy from the guy who was playing with me at Leeds that time. He had finished his (playing) career and it was what he really wanted to do. As a player I would have said no but, having met him afterwards, I could see it was something he was really interested in doing.â
Jonathan Woodgate arriving at Hull Crown Court in 2001 (Photo: Owen Humphreys â PA Images via Getty Images)
Bowyer took Charlton to promotion from League One last season, which was some feat bearing in mind the clubâs ownership issues, and his team are currently 17th in the Championship. Woodgate has found it harder: Middlesbrough are 20th after losing 4-0 at Elland Road last weekend, where the Leeds supporters nostalgically sang his name.
Bowyer is 42 now, Woodgate 39. Older, wiser, it is part of their life these days to make sure their players represent their clubs in the right way and avoid the kind of mistakes that, as younger men, they made themselves.
Woodgate, in particular, was fond of a night out, with an unfortunate habit of getting caught up in beery trouble. Friends from that time say he used to be easily led and could hang around with the wrong bunch. Though there are more endearing stories, too. One is of him seeing someone driving around in Middlesbrough in a yellow, three-wheeler Robin Reliant, Only Fools and Horses-style. Woodgate paid the owner twice what it was worth before driving it down to Leeds, where a rule was subsequently enforced that a different player each week, namely the worst trainers, had to take the keys.
Bowyerâs previous was a 1996 conviction for affray, within weeks of signing for Leeds, for hurling chairs around a McDonaldâs after a dispute with an Asian server over his food order. Yet both men are entitled to say â like most of us â that they are different people now compared with 20-odd years ago. As Woodgate said earlier this season: âListen, I wasnât the perfect angel in my career. Far from it â but I have learned.â He and Bowyer have both shown they understand a football club has to be at the heart of its community.
Lee Bowyer talks to journalists outside Hull Crown Court after he was found not guilty (Photo: Owen Humphreys â PA Images/PA Images via Getty Images)
âThey have been on a learning curve,â Ridsdale says. âI saw Jonathan a number of times when he was coaching the youth teams at Middlesbrough. Heâs one of the nicest young men you could wish to meet. And Lee has turned out to be probably the biggest surprise, in the sense that heâs a very considered, mature, hard-working manager.â
Note the word âsurpriseâ.
Well, yes, Ridsdale was once quoted as saying that, if he had known the trouble that Bowyer would bring to Leeds, he would rather the club had never signed him.
Bowyer reacted particularly badly to being fined four weeksâ wages for his part in that now-infamous night out. It ended with him being transfer-listed and screaming down the phone at his chairman. Nor did the player take it well when he was told he had to pay the courtâs legal costs.
âHe genuinely felt he shouldnât have to pay legal fees because heâd been found not guilty,â Ridsdale says. âBut of course the judge had said they have to pay legal fees. We were a public company and we had underwritten the legal fees.
âIn his last few months at Leeds, our relationship was fractious. Yet when Iâve spoken to him since he became manager at Charlton, he has matured. I have talked to him about transfers and he is still there at 10 oâclock at night trying to get a player over the line. His commitment, his hard work ⌠heâs a pleasure to deal with. When I remember the torrid times at Leeds, and a period that was traumatic to my relationship with both lads, I take great satisfaction that these two young men have turned out as they have.â
The Majestyk is long gone now. Its doors closed for the final time in 2006. A fire ripped through the Grade II-listed premises, just across from the cityâs railway station, eight years later and the former Majestic cinema, as it started in the 1920s, has undergone a major period of renovation to re-establish itself as a place of architectural pride.
Today, it is preparing to become the new headquarters for Channel 4 television.
But then, a lot has changed about that part of Leeds since the days when kicking-out time at Majestyk inspired the Kaiser Chiefs to write I Predict a Riot.
DV8 is now a tribute bar to the Stone Roses.
The Square On The Lane, where Woodgateâs posse were warned three times for upsetting other customers, no longer exists, depriving the city of what the Confidential Leeds website once described as âa cavernous den of wall-to-wall debaucheryâ.
If you were not familiar with Leeds you might not know where to find the old Yatesâ bar, now a Slug and Lettuce, where Woodgate had offered ÂŁ20 after final orders to the karaoke DJ to let one of his mates, nicknamed Gorilla, sing Westlifeâs Flying Without Wings (the offer was turned down, leading to another scene).
The Observatory, where one member of Woodgateâs group was ejected, is now an OâNeillâs. All the pubs they visited that night have different names and â too late now, perhaps â the city centre is wired up to a more sophisticated CCTV system that might have made it clearer who precisely did what when Sarfraz, in Ridsdaleâs words, was âmauled by a pack of animalsâ.
Thirty miles south, meanwhile, the Najeib family are going about their business.
They still live on the same estate outside Rotherham and run the cafe that has been in the family since 1986. The reviews on Facebook praise the staff for their friendliness. Most days, Shahzad will be behind the counter.
When we speak over lunch there are still glimpses of hurt, as you can imagine, and palpable anger. Sarfraz now has an office job and, if there is one saving grace, it is that he does not remember a great deal about the attack, even if the scars will be there for the rest of his life. For Shahzad, however, he can still remember seeing the blows land and the terrible fear that his younger brother might never wake up. Psychologically, it is still with him.
Back at the house, Muhammed sounds like he has never properly got over it, either. He is in his sixties now. The family, he says, has never felt there was any real justice, which has made it harder for them to move on. In particular, they have always wondered whether the first trial might have brought a different outcome to the second one.
Instead, the trial collapsed when the Sunday Mirror carried an interview with Muhammed that was in contempt of court. The newspaper, which was fined ÂŁ75,000, had an agreement with Sarfrazâs father that it would be published after the case. For nearly 20 years, he has had to live with that, too.
Shahzad wants a fee to speak on the record, so we agree to shake hands and wish each other well.
Equally, donât forget that OâLeary, then one of the best-paid managers in the Premier League, hardened a rift with Ridsdale â that has never been fixed â when deciding to publish a book at the time.
âI went to the first day of the trial,â Ridsdale recalls, âbut that was the only day I turned up because I then took a call from one of our shareholders saying, âListen, Peter, youâre the chairman of the PLC and the PLC is not on trial, itâs two of your employees. If you turn up every day, it will just reinforce the view itâs Leeds Unitedâs case.â It was good advice because that was the message I had been trying to put out since the start.
âThat was also my opening line, once the verdicts came in, at the press conference: âLeeds United werenât on trial, two of our players were.â The first riposte from somebody in the room was: âWell, why is David OâLeary bringing out a book called Leeds United On Trial?â Iâm not normally lost for words, but I was floored. I had no idea, genuinely, and I had to admit as much. Somebody asked whether I should have known. And, yes, I probably should have known.â
The relationship between Ridsdale and OâLeary had already been frayed after the club signed Rio Ferdinand from West Ham United to take Woodgateâs place, not least because of the real possibility that the player was going to prison.
The fee was ÂŁ18 million. It was a staggering amount for that time and OâLeary, according to Ridsdale, refused to attend the press conference. âWe had just broken a world record for signing a defender and, far from saying âThank youâ, he told me the fee was obscene. I had to take the press conference with Rio because the manager called it obscene and said he wasnât prepared to be part of it. As an employee of a PLC, when we had just spent a world-record fee to get him a player he wanted, that was not appropriate.â
OâLearyâs decision to release a book promising on its front cover âthe inside story of an astonishing yearâ subjected Leeds to another wave of hostile headlines. Yet the manager told Ridsdale he had not known what the book was going to be called.
âI can only tell you, with the benefit of hindsight, that Iâve since written a book and the publishers had to agree the title with me,â Ridsdale says. âAt the time I didnât believe David. And having written a book, knowing what you go through, I now absolutely donât believe him.â
As for the content about the arrest and trial, Ridsdale could not be clearer. âThe book should be fiction. I donât know how David knew half of it, because he wasnât even in the meetings. We deliberately kept him away from everything.â
It certainly isnât a book that the Najeib family will ever wish to read. The Athletic wonât name their cafe, or say where it is, for obvious reasons. But the cafe does offer some clues into the familyâs way of life. There is a chalkboard inside the entrance to explain the house rules (number four: âserved with a smileâ) and two books on the shelves for customers. One is a prayer book. The other is called Donât Be Sad.
2 Likes
Decent piece, bizarre final paragraph.
As for this bit, if this is the best they could come up with for âendearing storiesââŚ
Enjoyable read⌠The bit about buying the yellow robin reliant was very endearing.
2 Likes
very good post, canât believe its 20 years , we were on a great run that season and top of the prem a number of times, it was the beginning of the end for big dave as he lost the dressing later on the following seasons with the book being the final nail in the coffin, bowyer in was unbelievable form during the 00-01 season even when the trial was on 00-01 especially in the cl games,
OâLeary isnt exactly the brightest spark ⌠Bowyer was a nasty little cunt on the field - Always left the foot or elbow in. Leeds got what they deserved in the end and letâs hope they have learned some lessons
Yeah but he was our cunt ⌠âŚso fuck off!
1 Like
âArsenal will recall Eddie Nketiah in January, paving the way for him to join another club on a temporary basis until the end of the season.
It is looking likely that Bristol City could be his next destination.â
Looks like Leeds are in for their now annual February/March meltdown 
Woodgate is a massive simpleton. He once glassed himself in a nightclub
1 Like
He was nicknamed âVillage â .
He was the making of a really wonderful player but the assault case and injuries did him .
2 Likes
He was a fantastic centre half alright
People from the north east of England are generally a bit dim.
Cracking volley puts Leeds 1 up in the derby
1 Like
And now 2 up
Purring, what can go wrong?
Thatâs a smashing nickname
Made even better by the fact that the wearer of it wouldnât understand why heâd been called such
Oooohhhhhh, donât you know pump it upâŚ
1 Like
11 points clear of 3rd
1 Like