Hoops

A former "team mascot" was jailed for a year today for a vicious and unprovoked attack on a rival football supporter.
Powerfully-built Matthew McHugh, 20, and two friends trailed a group of Norwich City fans following a match at Loftus Road, baited them and then McHugh threw a single punch.
The blow hurled 16-year-old John Seater to the ground, shattered a number of his teeth, and left him barely able to eat or drink for months.
McHugh, a lifelong QPR supporter, who was chosen as the club's team mascot when he was a child, admitted one count of causing actual bodily harm on October 22, 2005.
Passing sentence, Judge David Martineau told the apprentice electrician of Culinton Close, Kenton, Middlesex, prison was inevitable for such a display of "gratuitous violence".
"The most serious aspect of this offence is that it was quite plainly and obviously premeditated.
"You and your two friends followed this group of five younger boys ... because they were Norwich City supporters and you were Queens Park Rangers fans.
"You deliberately provoked, between the three of you, a confrontation with Mr Seater. One of you kicked him in the back of the leg to try and make him turn round, another invited violence, and you punched him.
"The injury was serious and caused very considerable difficulty and discomfort in eating and so on for a good few months," he said.
As several of McHugh's relatives burst into tears, the judge added he would also have to pay his victim #500 compensation.
Mark Weekes, prosecuting, told the court earlier that just months before the incident the defendant had been bound over for using threatening words and behaviour following another QPR fixture.
end 201153 JUL 07

Posted By: Marigold, Jul 27, 15:49:17