Bob Higgins tells court he was treating boys for cramp and denies allegations of abuse

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

A former Southampton FC schoolboy football coach has told a jury that he gave young players soapy water massages and may have touched their testicles.

But Bob Higgins, who also coached at Peterborough United, insisted that any contact would have been purely accidental and denied that he sexually abused junior players.

Higgins, 66, confirmed that he had played romantic songs while driving players to and from training but said he had never been alone with boys in his car.

The prosecution has told Bournemouth crown court that Higgins was a predatory paedophile who used his power as one of the sport’s kingmakers to carry out a 25-year campaign of sexual abuse against boys as young as 11.

Higgins, who also worked for the Maltese football association as well as running his own football academy, denies 51 counts of indecent assault against 24 boys between the early 1970s and mid-1990s.

The alleged assaults are said to have taken place in a variety of settings, including training camps and Higgins’ home and car.

Higgins became Southampton’s youth development officer in 1975 after the appointment of Lawrie McMenemy as manager and worked at the club until 1989, the court heard.

He told jurors he had coached about 25 players who made it into Southampton’s first-team squad, including eight who became internationals.

Questioned by his defence QC, Alistair MacDonald, Higgins accepted he had driven boys to and from training, but never alone.

MacDonald asked: “At any stage did you do anything improper in relation to touching boys in your car?” The defendant replied: “No.”

Higgins said he had played music in his car, by artists such as Whitney Houston, Lionel Richie and Gladys Knight, because he and his wife, Shirley, liked them and they were popular in the charts.

He told the court that because of the intensity of the training and the risk of cramp, he and other coaches would give the boys soapy water massages, an idea he said he had copied from the former England and Leeds United manager Don Revie.

The defendant denied “knowingly or deliberately” touching the boys’ testicles or penises. He agreed his hand “may have” touched their testicles but it would not have been deliberate, he said.

The court heard that Higgins left school at 15 and wanted to work in professional football. He began taking Football Association courses while working full-time outside the game. “I knew I wasn’t going to be a footballer because I wasn’t good enough,” Higgins said.

By 1971 Higgins was working for Crystal Palace as a youth coach and running evening training sessions for youngsters. He left Palace in 1973 and was later recommended to Southampton.

Higgins denied he had “favourites” among the young players he worked with and dismissed the suggestion they were the only players to win professional contracts. “No, if I had done that I would be out of a job,” he told the court.

The trial continues.