Mike Tyson, wearing a Peterborough United top, strode onto the pitch at London Road to rapturous applause cascading down from the stands.
The caption — “proof Mike Tyson is a Posh fan!” — is written in capital letters, just in case the import of the great man’s appearance at a pre-season friendly against Arsenal in 2010 passes you by.
‘Iron Mike’ is no stranger to global adulation. He is, after all, one of the greatest heavyweight boxers of all time, and one of the most recognised sportsmen in history.
He’s also a vicious thug who spent three years in jail for raping an 18-year-old girl, and a self-confessed wife beater.
This 16-stone superhero even boasted in his biography Fire and Fear that “the best punch I’ve ever thrown” was the one that landed on his first wife Robin Givens, slamming her against “every wall in the apartment”.
As he makes clear later in the book: “I like to hurt women...”
But there is no record of the self-styled ‘Baddest Man On The Planet’ ever being cruel to a cat. So that’s okay then.
There will be no raucous applause on football terraces for Kurt Zouma, no club website boasting about what lower-league team the Frenchman bizarrely supports, no clamour to get his thoughts rushed onto the pages of a best-selling biography.
The West Ham player is persona non grata for what he did, and rightly so. This defender has no defence. You’re cancelled, pal.
As the doting owner of two lovable Siamese cats (or is it the other way round?), I was one of the millions horrified by that video which, for reasons known only to himself, Zouma’s brother Yoan chose to record and upload, leaving no doubt whatsoever about his sibling’s culpability.
It’s no exaggeration to say that the better-known Zouma has been tainted for life by this disgraceful episode, and no number of hand-wringing apologies will assuage that.
There is no attempt here, by the way, to conflate two completely different, albeit contemptible, scenarios.
I mention them merely as an example of how skewed sport’s moral compass can get.
When Zouma next visits St James Park, he’ll no doubt suffer catcalls, if you’ll excuse the pun, by Newcastle supporters who, just a few months ago, were celebrating their club being bought over by one of the most inhumane regimes on earth.
Drink-driving convictions, meanwhile, barely make it onto football’s morality register.
Prior to the Zouma debacle, the ‘sports news’ media had laid siege to Raith Rovers’ ground in Kirkcaldy, recording the outrage sparked by the Scottish club signing one of the two footballers who’d been found to have raped a woman 11 years ago.
The anger from fans, sponsors, employees and the Raith women’s team against the recruitment of David Goodwillie was understandable and ultimately led to a reverse ferret and clawing contrition from the board.
Yet 32-year-old Goodwillie didn’t suddenly appear out of nowhere.
He has been turning out for Clyde since 2017, having joined them just three months after the judge in a civil case ruled that he and another footballer, David Robertson, had taken advantage of a women being “vulnerable through an excessive intake of alcohol” and “incapable of giving meaningful consent.”
She was subsequently awarded £100,000 in damages, but no criminal charges were brought against either player.
Robertson retired from the game, but Goodwillie went on to make 176 appearances for Clyde, was appointed club captain last summer, was player of the season two years running and his 109 goals put him sixth in the Scottish League One team’s list of all-time leading scorers.
You can still buy “100 goals and counting” Goodwillie mugs (£9.99) at the Bully Wee club shop. No other Clyde player has sold so many replica shirts.
The contrasting attitude of fans from two Scottish clubs 40 miles apart is quite remarkable; how can Goodwillie be revered at the Broadwood Stadium, yet have others reviling even the thought of him setting foot in Stark’s Park?
Perhaps the fact that Clyde signed him prior to the onset of the transformative societal reckoning of #MeToo saw this episode travel under a radar that is now, thankfully, a lot more sensitive to sexual abuse by the privileged and self-entitled.
In the fickle world of football, however, there’s a history of some being more forgiving — and forgiven — than others.
In 1999, former Arsenal and England midfielder Graham Rix, then Chelsea’s assistant manager, was jailed for having sex with an underage girl.
The London club kept his job open and welcomed him back six months later. No such absolution for ex-Sunderland striker Adam Johnson, now back in society after being convicted of a similar offence to Rix in 2016.
With regard to other serious criminal offences, 18 years ago West Brom striker Lee Hughes crashed his Mercedes into another car following a heavy drinking session.
He ran away from the scene, leaving the other driver, 56-year-old Douglas Graham, dying in the wreckage. Mr Graham’s wife Maureen also suffered dreadful injuries and passed away 13 months later.
Upon his release, Hughes was snapped up by Oldham Athletic. The club received just three complaints about the signing.
Like Goodwillie, Hughes was a prolific goalscorer and that clearly helps an offender’s climb up the ladder of forgiveness.
Football and boxing aren’t the only sports, however, with an elastic relationship with morality and basic decency.
Read the extensive articles that followed US basketball superstar Kobe Bryant’s death in a 2020 helicopter crash and see how many refer to him being charged with sexually assaulting a 19-year-old female concierge in a Colorado hotel in 2003 (just three months after Vanessa Bryant, wife of this “loving husband and father”, had given birth to the couple’s first daughter, Natalia).
The celebrated shooting guard later publicly admitted he “didn’t explicitly ask for consent”.
After the breakdown of the criminal case — during which Bryant’s legal team named the supposedly anonymous complainant no fewer than six times in open court, as well as frequently ‘victim-shaming’ her in the media — the LA Lakers icon faced civil action and eventually settled for an undisclosed sum.
Throughout the various courtroom sessions, the 18-time All-Star and five-time NBA champion continued to perform in front of hugely supportive crowds, flying back and forth between Colorado and California.
At least a tearful Bryant admitted in a press conference that, after the incident, he was “furious at myself, disgusted by me”.
Which is a lot more than Tyson has ever done.
Towards the end of his popular US one-man stage show ‘Mike Tyson: Undisputed Truth’, the 55-year-old New Yorker speaks candidly in packed venues about his biggest regrets.
These include not paying Frank Sinatra “proper respect” one day, and turning down Michael Jackson’s invitation to smoke a joint with him.
Clearly, being thrown in the slammer for the rape of a teenager in an Indianapolis hotel room in 1991 doesn’t figure highly on Iron Mike’s list of regrets.
His remorse over those other pivotal moments, however, earned him a standing ovation.
