In dramatic evidence at the trial of several British footballers yesterday, Leeds United player Michael Duberry said he lied about details related to an alleged attack on an Asian student.
He also said his solicitor advised him to stick to his original police statement, even though Duberry told him it was incorrect.
The 24-year-old footballer told Hull Crown Court that he had lied to police about events following an attack on the student, Mr Sarfraz Najeib (20), to protect his team-mate and best friend, Jonathan Woodgate (21). But on two occasions when he had wanted to change his statement Duberry said his solicitor had told him to stick to his story.
Former England footballer Woodgate, of Middlesbrough; Leeds United player Lee Bowyer (24), of Leeds; a sports science student Mr Paul Clifford (21), of Middlesbrough, and a bricklayer, Mr Neale Caveney (21), of Middlesbrough, deny affray and causing grievous bodily harm to Mr Najeib in an attack near a Leeds nightclub last January. Duberry, Woodgate, Mr Clifford and Mr Caveney also deny perverting the course of justice.
On his second day in the witness box, Duberry said he had told police that after meeting Woodgate, who told him he had been involved in a fight with Asian students outside the Majestyk nightclub, he and a group of friends had taken a taxi to Duberry's Leeds home.
"It was a lie," Duberry told the court, because he had given the group of friends a lift in his car.
Woodgate's statement to the police said that the group had taken a taxi and Duberry said he went along with it: "I did not want to say anything that would get Woody into any more trouble. I did not want to get him in trouble so I went along with his story."
A month after the attack, which left Mr Najeib with six facial fractures and a broken leg, Duberry visited his solicitor, Mr Peter McCormick, an associate club director in charge of discipline, to tell him that he wanted to change his statement.
Duberry said Mr McCormick advised him against it: "I told him I knew what it was about and I wanted to change what I wanted to say and he advised me not to. He used the word `perjury' and said: `Say what is in your statement and stick with it.' "