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Vindicated

Grobbelaar wins match-fixing libel case

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Posted: Thursday July 29, 1999 07:29 AM

LONDON (Reuters) -- Bruce Grobbelaar, the former Liverpool and Zimbabwe goalkeeper, won a high-profile libel case on Wednesday against Britain's top-selling Sun newspaper over match-fixing allegations.

Britain's High Court awarded Grobbelaar 85,000 pounds (US$134,900) damages. The paper will also have to pay the Zimbabwean's costs, estimated at 500,000 pounds (US$793,800).

Judge Charles Gray said the damages did not have to be paid for 21 days, pending any Sun appeal. The paper's attorney George Carman said the Sun would appeal both the verdict and the level of damages.

Grobbelaar's lawyers have described the Sun's allegations as a "classic scam," saying he had been wronged when he tried to expose corruption.

The case comes two years after Grobbelaar and fellow Premier League players John Fashanu and Hans Segers were found not guilty on criminal charges of conspiring to help fix matches for Asian betting syndicates.

The Football Association handed Grobbelaar and Segers six-month bans and 10,000-pound (US$15,800) fines, both suspended, after the two goalkeepers admitted in court that they tried to help the Asian syndicates forecast match results. But neither tried to predict the scores from their own teams' matches they said.

After Wednesday's verdict, Grobbelaar kissed his wife in court and then made an immediate phone call on his mobile after the judge had left.

Flanked by his lawyers, he then went to the front steps of the law courts to give a brief statement.

"I would like to thank my counsel, solicitors and the family who have stood by me over the past five years," he said. "It is a day we can all relish in the fact we got the verdict.

"I got the verdict at the criminal trial also."

Grobbelaar, who has recently been involved in coaching in South Africa, said he will return to soccer but would first take a holiday with his family.

"One thing that happened was that there was a unanimous verdict from the jury today," he said,

He added that he had not brought the case for the money, saying: "I was just trying to clear my name."

 

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