Soccer star claims articles falsely linked him to crime

A former Premiership footballer claims a newspaper defamed him by falsely saying he was linked to Dublin gangland figures and crime.

David Speedie, aged 55, who played for a number of top English clubs in the ’80s and ’90s, including Liverpool and Chelsea, says he was disgusted and humiliated by two articles in the Sunday World in April 2011.

Mr Speedie has launched a High Court action, saying the articles falsely claimed he was linked to mobster Fat Freddy Thompson. They damaged his reputation and lost him work as a football pundit on Irish television and radio, he says.

He also claims it caused him to be depressed and frightened for his life to the extent that he moved back to his UK home in Doncaster. He says he decided to return to Dublin, because he missed his fiancée Margaret Grey.

The publishers of the paper, Sunday Newspapers Ltd, editor Colm McGinty, and the journalist who wrote the story, Mick McCaffrey, deny defamation. They say the articles are true in substance and fact and do not mean what Mr Speedie claims they mean.

Mr Speedie’s fiancée is a sister of a woman married to Ritchie Thompson, Freddy Thompson’s older brother, a High Court judge and jury heard.

Mr Speedie claims the first article, on April 10, 2011, headed “Kops and Robbers”, meant he was engaged in criminal activity. A second article, on April 24, following a solicitor’s letter to the paper, was headed “Speedie the Snake”, with a photograph of him handling a snake at a birthday party. He claims this meant he was a snake and a reptile.

Mr Speedie said he never said, or could not recall, much of what had been quoted by him in the first Sunday World article.

The case continues before Mr Justice John Hedigan and a jury of 11. One juror was excused after the case started when she realised she knew Mr McCaffrey.