This should never have come to trial. As Anton Ferdinand himself said in court, it should have been a matter for the FA to deal with. The incident between Luis Suarez and Patrice Evra was resolved by the football authorities. Why was this treated so differently? The case against Terry seemed manufactured by somebody lip-reading footage after an event which had apparently been resolved (in contrast with Evra’s case, incidentally, where there was still a grievance to deal with.) Whose decision was it to make this a criminal matter, costing huge amounts of public money, when it could have been sorted out by the football authorities, without all the stress suffered by the players and the inevitable damage to the game caused by dragging this through the courts?