The former football coach George Ormond sexually assaulted a young Newcastle United player after befriending him when the footballer was feeling insecure and low on confidence, the jury at Ormond’s trial has been told.

Giving evidence at Newcastle crown court, the former player said that Ormond, who was a coach at a north-east boys’ football club and has been described as a “kit man, gopher and dogsbody” for Newcastle United’s youth system, assaulted him after taking him out for a drink and being “supportive”.

The alleged victim, who cannot be named for legal reasons, described himself as “a shy-natured boy,” who was naive and felt lonely and “terrified at leaving his family” when he first arrived to play for the club.

Ormond told him he was a schoolboy coach connected to the club, he said, and invited him out for a drink. They returned to the hotel where Newcastle United accommodated the young man on his own, and put on a pornographic video. Ormond performed a sex act, he said, and suggested that he do the same.

“I literally was in complete shock,” the witness said. “I shook my head; I tried to speak, I had a lump in my throat. I was in total shock about what was happening.”

The former player said that he had felt intimidated at Newcastle, that competition for places in the team was very difficult, and that his confidence was “knocked out of me” during his time at the club. Towards the end of his contract, Ormond took him out for drinks again and was “very supportive,” telling him he was “hearing good things” about him as a player. Then Ormond sexually assaulted him in his van afterwards, the former player told the court.

“I literally couldn’t speak,” he said. “I just froze: it’s fright or flight, and I just froze.”

The witness said he had not mentioned the sexual abuse to anybody until 2002 when he told his wife, who had read in a newspaper that Ormond had been charged with sexual offences. The jury, of six women and five men, has already been told that Ormond was convicted of sexual offences in 2002. He denies that any of the incidents for which he is now charged took place.

Another alleged victim told the court that he had “wrestled” throughout his life with the memory of not having resisted Ormond when he sexually assaulted him. He said he came from a working class background where it would be assumed that he would fight him off, and that before it happened to him he would have assumed that he would fight. Instead, he “completely froze,” he said.

“It’s probably the thing I think about most; why I didn’t fight, that’s one of the things I wrestle with … Then I read other people’s accounts and understand completely how that can happen.”

Rebecca Trowler QC, defending Ormond, accused that alleged victim of making up the incidents to pursue a financial compensation claim against Newcastle United. He emphatically denied that, and said people are “entitled” to make a compensation claim when such things happen to them.

“To suggest I am standing here making up stories for financial gain: I find it abhorrent,” he said.

Ormond is charged with one count of buggery, 36 counts of indecent assault and one of indecency he is alleged to have committed against 19 victims, over a 25-year period between 1973 and 1998. He is alleged to have committed the offences while being involved in Newcastle United’s youth development system, coaching at a north-east boys’ football club, and helping with extra-curricular activities at a school.

The trial continues.