Should Dean Ashton sue Wright-Phillips?
By: Rob | December 12th, 2009
You might have heard, that sadly, West Ham striker Dean Ashton has at 26 had to call and end to his playing career due to an injury. The injury was an ankle inury which was doing progressively more damage, until his doctor warned him that he might not ever walk again if he didn’t give up.
Its a sad story, Ashton was rising to the top of his game, and he’d worked a way into the England squad and its a shame to see any player have to bow out well before his time.
The injury, according to Ashton came from a tackle from Shaun Wright-Phillips while the two were on England duty, and now Ashton is thinking of sueing the Manchester City winger.
It isn’t unprecendented, Kevin Muscat had to pay £250k to Matt Holmes just last week after the former’s tackle ended the career of the latter. But Are footballers right to sue one another?
On one hand, I can see Ashton’s point. Assuming he’s right, and it was a Wright-Phillips tackle that has ended his career, then he’s lost at least five years earnings from one presumably reckless moment.
But it likely isn’t really Wright-Phillips fault either. Its probably safe to assume that on the training pitch it wasn’t a premeditated or malicious tackle, this isn’t a Roy Keane of Alf-Inge Haaland situation. It may well have been that someone was going to hit Ashton’s ankle in the wrong way at some point, and it just happened, for whatever reason to be SWP that day.
And while footballer’s career’s are obviously very short as they are, there is something bizzare about one wealthy footballer paying another wealthy footballer a large some of money, for any reason.
There is also the worrying knock on. Football is, a physical game. I’ve been critical of horror tackles before – I’m not the kind of person who sees the game as thugish, but it does need to have tackles. Imagine a nightmareish situation where noone would tackle because they’re all afraid of breaking each others legs and ending up in the dock? Football would be more fast paced and pretty, but a whole wonderful element of the game would be entirely lost.
On balance, I don’t think Ashton should sue really. But Wright-Phillips should probably do something nice for him anyway, I’d feel pretty bad if it was my tackle that cost someone their lively hood.
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