I have little sympathy for the man he attacked or the sentiments he rushed to express but Cantona would have faced insults as

I have little sympathy for the man he attacked or the sentiments he rushed to express, but Cantona would have faced insults as bad if not worse almost every time he played.Distressingly, it is part of the game and not only in football. Undoubtedly it would have been harsh, but it was a straightforward offence witnessed by by millions and I was not impressed by the mitigation that Cantona was provoked beyond the point of restraint. If he was a dog who had attacked someone, his owner would have been up before the beaks. It takes nothing away from the bizarre nature of this business that his owner, if we can describe Manchester United’s manager Alex Ferguson thus, was at Buckingham Palace receiving the insignia of the CBE at the same time Cantona was in court.If the magistrates had merely passed the sentence without the accompanying moralising I would have been more ready to accept it.

The fabric of decency is being torn to shreds by all manner of high-placed and influential Britons and here is a Justice of the Peace castigating a Frenchman who is known to have as much control over his temper as the Prime Minister has concerning the Chancellor.If you are going to lecture a foreigner on his moral duties, perhaps some word of admonishment should be offered to the club responsible for his presence among us. We offer leniency to paratroopers convicted of far more harmful violence. I know they might come in handy one day but there is a strange contradiction here. I can’t imagine what makes us entitled to expect a citizen of a country we have spent 1,000 years snarling at to act as a shining beacon to British youth on our behalf. Pop musicians, film stars, TV personalities, soap stars and all other icons to the nation’s impressionable youth can carry on lives of abandon and debauchery without ever being accused of failing as role models. I accept that sport represents much of what is clean and wholesome about life but why should those who play it professionally have to conduct themselves in a manner over and above that demanded by the laws of the game and the land?There’s also the little matter of Cantona being French.

He should face the same music as anyone who commits an assault, we argued. We didn’t realise that, in his case, the volume would be turned up so high.Another grating aspect of the magistrates’ decision is the implication, depressingly familiar, that when it comes to public figures those of a sporting bent are expected to be answerable to a higher level of moral rectitude. For this reason the only appropriate sentence is an absolute discharge and I award you £50 out of public funds to get your warts fixed.”I gather there was a time long passed when a gentleman would receive harsher punishment than a labourer on the grounds he should know better, and no doubt a person’s means are taken into account when assessing a fine, but the modern principle that all are equal under the law is the very reason that many of us were content to see Cantona prosecuted. For this reason, the only sentence that is appropriate for this offence is two weeks’ imprisonment forthwith.”
If you take this reasoning just a little down the road towards absurdity, the same magistrate could say to another footballer convicted of a similar offence: “You are a low-profile Third Division full-back with highly doubtful gifts and as such you are shunned by many young people. In Croydon, how- ever, the precise opposite appears to apply.

Cantona was sent down to the cells for two weeks because of who he is rather than what he did. He was told by the chairman of the bench: “You are a high-profile public figure with undoubted gifts, and as such you are looked up to by many young people. (Johnny Herbert had a point when he argued that the new McLaren “should be illegal because it looks so ugly”.) Even so, Murray Walker is backing Nige. And it’s a brave person who contradicts Walker on these matters.. THE WAY things are going, O J Simpson could get a lighter sentence than Eric Cantona. Ridiculous as it may be to compare what happened to Cantona on a common assault charge at Croydon Magistrates’ Court with the double murder rap being faced by Simpson in Los Angeles, there is a question raised by both events – can justice avoid being distorted when a sporting superstar is involved?

Many in the United States are convinced that Simpson’s idol status will protect him even if the evidence doesn’t. And Lord knows where he’s going to hang the air-freshener, given that strange, snubby shape of the new car.