A football coach who spent several years working at Newcastle United “cynically manipulated his position” of authority to groom and sexually assault young boys over a 25-year period, a jury has been told.

George Ormond, now 62, is charged with 38 criminal sexual offences against 19 victims who were youth footballers at the time. Thirty-six of the charges are indecent assault, along with one of indecency and one of buggery, alleged to have been committed between1973 and 1998.

He is alleged to have committed the offences during the years he worked as a volunteer kitman, bus driver and helper in the Newcastle United youth set up, as a coach at a north-east boys’ football club, and as a helper on the Duke of Edinburgh scheme in a Newcastle school.

Opening the case before Judge Edward Bindloss at Newcastle crown court, prosecuting barrister Sharon Beattie told the jury: “George Ormond was a person, an older man, you will hear, who used his position to groom and manipulate young people in order to facilitate sexual assaults on them.”

Beattie said that many of the alleged victims recall a rule at the boys’ club, which was strictly enforced, that they must never wear underpants. He said that they described constant references by Ormond to the boys’ genitals and to masturbation, repeated indecency, inappropriate touching and sexual assaults.

He is alleged to have assaulted the victims at the boys’ club where he gave them rub-downs with liniment, Beattie said, and in his car or van where he had boys on their own after offering to give them lifts home. He was “liked and trusted” by many of the boys and their parents, and was regularly invited into their homes. One assault is alleged to have taken place in Ormond’s home on a boy he had invited to stay over, while Ormond’s then-wife was upstairs.

“To many, as well as being in a position of trust, he appeared to be a figure of authority and influence,” Beattie told the jury, “and this was something that at times he cynically manipulated to his own advantage.”

Several victims, Beattie said, will testify that Ormond used their football ambitions as young boys to enable his sexual assaults and manipulate the boys into keeping quiet.

One of the complainants, Beattie said, alleged that during the time Ormond had begun to sexually assault him, Ormond had said to him: “I know you don’t want to do this but it’s what you must do to be a footballer.”

The same alleged victim says Ormond warned him to keep quiet by telling him: “I’ve got your dreams in my hand. If you say anything, I will crush them.” With that, Beattie said, Ormond clenched his hand tightly.

That was “a further example”, she said, “of the cynical manipulation of young boys’ dreams for Ormond’s sexual pleasure.”

Ormond sat impassively, occasionally making notes, in the dock behind reinforced glass, as the case against him was outlined.

Beattie told the jury that Ormond left Newcastle United following allegations made by a former youth player about him. At the time, no police complaint was made against Ormond, but Beattie said that “Newcastle United, under the guise of George Ormond’s lack of current coaching qualifications, dispensed with his services”.

That former youth player “and a few others” did complain to the police in 2000 and, in 2002, Ormond was tried and convicted of criminal sexual offences, Beattie told the jury. Two former players went public in 2016 with allegations against Ormond, and then the current alleged victims, many of whom had never previously talked to anybody about these experiences, made complaints to the police.

Beattie said that the offences alleged in the current charges “share a number of similar features” with those for which Ormond was convicted, and show, she said, “that George Ormond has a proven disposition to sexually assault young men in particular ways and circumstances”.

Beattie said the alleged victims had explained different reasons for why they did not previously make complaints about Ormond’s conduct.

“Some chose to bury what happened, some were embarrassed, most had never told anyone,” she said. “Some even felt guilty, worried whether in some way they were responsible for George Ormond’s abuse of them. Of course they were not.”

Ormond denies all the charges. Beattie told the jury that he denies that any of the alleged incidents happened at all.

“His case in essence is that all these allegations are untrue.”

The opening of the prosecution case continues on Thursday.