Joss Labadie

[ferrarilover]

So, the FA now charge people at random, even when no complaint (other than some mouthpiece on Twitter) has been made? Excellent, I tweeted furiously after the Northampton game about the attempted murder on Bodin. I look forward to reading all about their bloke being charged.

Matt.

[Richinns]

So, the FA now charge people at random, even when no complaint (other than some mouthpiece on Twitter) has been made? Excellent, I tweeted furiously after the Northampton game about the attempted murder on Bodin. I look forward to reading all about their bloke being charged.

Matt.

I suspect this is the doing the the Daily Fail journo who is clearly a prize prick.

Just look at the delight he has had in his reporting of the charge here:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/footba ... onent.html

[Richinns]

We should all tweet Alan Biggs - the Daily Fail moron and tell him exactly what we think:
@AlanBiggs1

[Scott Brehaut]

No Mansell was captain. Labadie led the team at Pompey.

The video is surely not enough to find him guilty. While you can see him burying his head in Banks's chest, you can't see him actually biting him. Strange that it's taken this long for the FA to make a decision. Glad we're contesting the charge - he should be available for Fleetwood and maybe Rochdale. By then we will probably be all but relegated so it won't matter and if he's found guilty we can tear up his contract and save some money as there's no way he would stay with us in the Conference.

So, on the video you can see him burying his head into this guys chest, cant see him biting him but can see Banks straight away protesting and then later there is a photo showing he has been bitten.

Strange coincidence....

[brucie]

Or that there was a second Chesterfield player allegedly bitten - who doesn't appear to have any injury or indeed there doesn't seem to be a jot of evidence that it took place.

Or that the referee was about two yards away from the first incident and didnt do anything about it.

[Alpine Joe]

If it's true that Joss Labadie has been selected at random to face a charge then I'm sure that is something we'd all condemn. At the time I thought a complaint had been made to the match official by the person who was alleging that he had been bitten, and that this complaint was the basis for the incident being referred to in the referee's report.

Brucie points out that the Ref was reasonably close to the incident (or non incident), and we can but hope that he has categorically stated that he could clearly see that no offence took place. I do somehow doubt that to be the case given that Joss has now been hit with an F.A charge.

If he is indeed innocent, and is being falsely accused, then we should commend Joss Labadie on his restraint. Personally if it had been me being accused in the national newspapers of biting someone during a football match I'd be fuming. I would have been loudly proclaiming my innocence, demanding that the PFA take action against the fellow member making up lies against me, and asking the F.A to charge the Chesterfield manager and a couple of their players for spreading a fictitious story that was tarnishing my reputation.

If I was guilty I'd probably keep quiet and hope the whole thing would blow over and go away.

[tommyg]

So, on the video you can see him burying his head into this guys chest, cant see him biting him but can see Banks straight away protesting and then later there is a photo showing he has been bitten.

Strange coincidence....

Oh I admit he's probably bitten him. But what I'm saying is can you charge Labadie if there's no actual
shot of him sinking his teeth into Banks? It's not like the Suarez case where there were multiple camera angles which caught him chewing on Ivanovic. Labadie could just say he was pushing Banks away with his head. I'm sure he is guilty but the FA have to prove it 100% and unless Labadie admits to it then I think there is always going to be a slight element of doubt.

[Gullscorer]

So being found not guilty doesn't make him innocent..?? Wrong. People are always innocent until proved guilty..

[Alpine Joe]

tommyg

But what I'm saying is can you charge Labadie if there's no actual shot of him sinking his teeth into Banks?

For sure they can and they have tommy. To continue making comparisons with Suarez, wouldn't you have had to ask how the F.A could bring charges against him for racially abusing Patrick Evra if there was no audio of the incident ?

As you'll remember from the time, Liverpool questioned whether a charge could be brought when there was no evidence and no witnesses.

"The six-day hearing, which concluded on Tuesday, was told Suarez used "insulting words", which included a reference to Evra's colour.
A Liverpool statement said : "We find it extraordinary that Luis can be found guilty on the word of Patrice Evra alone.
"No one else on the field of play - including Evra's own Manchester United team-mates and all the match officials - heard the alleged conversation between the two players in a crowded Kop goalmouth".

The F.A have their own set of standards for deciding guilt or innocence, and they don't always bear much relation with what we expect the legal system to require when determining guilt or innocence in a Court. The John Terry/Anton Ferdinand case being an example of two different verdicts being reached, one via the British legal system, and then a different decision coming from the F.A 'jury'.

[gullintwoplaces]

Have to say that I am surprised at the tone and content of some of the above comments. He has been charged, he has not been found guilty, he (and the Gulls) have maintained a DIGNIFIED silence throughout (this does NOT imply guilt, despite what one comment above implies).

This allegation has been played out largely on Twatter and in the gutter press, hardly the most appropriate place for a trial to take place. The "evidence" in the public arena is thin to put it mildly, Alan Biggs's article in the Daily Fail has lots of pictures of Suaraz, none of Labadie biting anybody.

I am appalled that players choose to air their grievances on Twatter, especially when they allege misconduct by others. If Chesterfield were unhappy then they should have contacted the FA direct. Instead we have seen lots of undignified posturing, which is very unhelpful and unfair on Joss.

[usagullmichigan]

Am I the only one who thinks the video looks bad? I think he is totally guilty. You can see the player react straight away. Silly boy Joss.

[Scott Brehaut]

Am I the only one who thinks the video looks bad? I think he is totally guilty. You can see the player react straight away. Silly boy Joss.

No, I'm the same - hence my response above....I think the video does him no favours whatsoever.

[gullintwoplaces]

Am I the only one who thinks the video looks bad? I think he is totally guilty. You can see the player react straight away. Silly boy Joss.

Why don't we all just wait for the hearing? I really don't think comments like "totally guilty" are fair when all you have seen is a fuzzy bit of video. Trial by media has been around for a while, now it appears we have trial by comments on forums and on Twatter.

[ferrarilover]

So, a grainy film of two blokes coming together at a corner and the attached photo are all we know so far.

The video shows nothing. Two guys jostling for position at a corner.
How do you even bite a bloke on the ribs? It's not as though this Banks fella won't be a highly toned athlete. Getting hold of anything to bite would be hard in itself. The shirt would be soaked in sweat, such would taste vile.
The tweet which goes with the picture says: "... I can't believe another human has taken a chunk out if my ribs..." If this chunk of flesh were removed, there would be bleeding. Blood will have soaked into his shirt. Does anyone remember seeing him sent to the bench by the referee in order to change his shirt (as per the rigidly enforced blood rule)?
Camb has mentioned previously that Banks hardly reacts like someone who has had a chunk bitten out of them. I've just reviewed film of the most famous sporting bite of all time and Holyfield (a considerably tougher man than Banks and one married to a pain management specialist) reacts by wheeling away from Tyson and seeking refuge on the ropes. He clutches at his ear and gesticulates to the referee that he's hurt. Banks doesn't do any of that. He holds out an arm and then just jogs off. We see footballers every day who get little more than a knock on the shin and they are down for minutes at a time crying and needing "treatment". These are not tough men. If they had a chunk of flesh removed, they'd certainly be letting everyone know about it.
He doesn't react to Ladders in any way commensurate with being bitten. He just throws an arm (his second elbow of the move, I might add) vaguely in Joss's direction before ambling away. No clutching of the chest, no fisticuffs, no turning to the referee or a team mate to show them what's happened. Nothing.

The picture. Well, absenting the idea that the chest shown could belong to absolutely anybody. The picture is awfully blurry. Footballers, although not bright, are certainly capable of working their smartphones. No one takes a picture that blurry and uploads it to Twitter unless a more in focus image serves their purpose less well. It's a bit like the 'Bigfoot' film we've all seen. The reason it's jerky and badly framed is because if it were well shot, it would be extremely obvious that we were watching footage of a bloke in a rented bear costume plodding about the New Forest.
Someone tell me what we're even looking at in that picture. Even if we are to accept that it's a picture of this Banks chap, that looks like a hicky to me. Is the proper allegation perhaps one of sexual assault? Could we be on the cusp of the outing of Joss as the first gay professional?

No one in the crowd reacts. Not a fan, not a steward, not a ballboy. Being bitten is going to cause you to scream. There's no doubt about that. SG will be along in a minute to tell us that he's Robocop and wouldn't scream even if someone went at his balls with a rusty razor, but Dave is the exception, not the rule. A scream on a football pitch will draw attention. Where there's attention on a pitch, the crowd will appeal. We know this from watching football at Plainmoor. The ball gets fired into a crowded box and someone, somewhere goes down. Without having seen anything of the incident, 2000 Torquay fans are absolutely adamant that it was a foul and that a penalty should be awarded.* We aren't unique in this respect.
Even if the photo is of a bite and that bite is on the chest of Banks, there's bugger all to suggest that it was Ladders who caused it. They were, of course, together on a football pitch in the hours leading up to the tweeting of the blurry picture which may or may not have been released contemporaneously with its creation of something which may or may not be a bite and may or may not be attached to the body of this Banks bloke, but that means absolutely nothing, because so were 20 other players and none of them is before the FA.

So, we add together a grainy video which shows, if anything at all, that Banks wasn't bitten at that time and a blurry photo of...Something and we add in the steadfast denial from Ladderz and we're left with, probably, a statement written in crayon by a footballer reading something along the lines of, "dat bloke bit me coz he iz a meanie."
If (and it's a big if) that's all they've got, then Ladabie's denial should be enough to see him through. If it's not, then I'd like to make the FA aware please that I was in the pub last night with the whole Fleetwood Town squad and I was bitten by all of them...

Matt.

[Spireite]

Just had a quick scan read thru this thread to check your thoughts on this incident and have to say, I'm not too surprised by most of your reactions, ie first thoughts are to defend our club and players etc. I must stress however, that neither Ollie Banks or Chesterfield FC are pushing this matter at all, far from it. All our manager said at our AGM meeting was that he had informed the referee and hoped it would be in the refs match report and therefore over to the authorities to investigate.

Just to let you know, I was at the game and it was also me who did the screen capture with the red circle around Labadie as he bit into Banks. Yes, the screen image is grainy, I captured of my laptop over a slow internet connection. I'm sure the club has better quality if it is asked to provide it. What the image and the video show is that as we play in a corner, as the ball goes high over the 6 yard box, a few yards away, away from where the (footy) action is the goal mouth, Labadie has grabbed Banks from behind and then bit him on his left side.

The referee hasn't seen it because he is watching the players in the goalmouth. I didn't see it; I'd bet nobody else in the stadium other than Banks and Labadie knew what was going on. Labadie's 'assault' (because that what it is) was over and done in a split second. Banks raised his arms, then looks down his left side and then chases after the referee. However, at the same time, you break away from our corner, your guy races down the right wing, the ref runs trying to keeping up with play (rightly so) and Banks's appeals to the ref are ignored, all understandable really. Banks was obviously upset and rightly so, had a photo took of the bite and tweeted it. That was it as far as he was concerned apart from informing our manager who then made his report to the ref. Note, Labadie had also bitten Armand (our no.21) late on in the 2nd half - seems he thought he could get away with it again? This is why at the end of the game there was friction between the both of them which nearly ended in blows being exchanged.

I just wanted to put our side of the story to you. I'm sure I will be shot down but hey-ho that's football.

I wish you well, I like Torquay - some good memories, but unfortunately Labadie is a disgrace for your club and deserves everything he gets. Just my opinion of course.