This week the Mason Greenwood situation posed a similar dilemma for Manchester United as the case of Paddy Jackson and Stuart Olding did to Irish rugby in June 2018.
None of the three, the footballer and the two rugby players, were found to have committed any illegal acts after lengthy, albeit very different, processes.
The contracts of Jackson and Olding were terminated with Ulster Rugby and the IRFU when they were acquitted of rape in Belfast. And this week Manchester United announced that Greenwood would be leaving Old Trafford after a six-month investigation into the striker’s conduct.
“All those involved, including Mason, recognise the difficulties with him recommencing his career at Manchester United. It has therefore been mutually agreed that it would be most appropriate for him to do so away from Old Trafford, and we will now work with Mason to achieve that outcome,” read a statement.
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Their dismissals were down to their conduct and the public reaction. The market speaks – the fans, the interest groups, the shareholders.
Greenwood’s case never went to trial when the alleged victim declined to co-operate with England’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), which dropped its case in February. The alleged victim had requested the police to drop their investigation in April 2022, but the CPS proceeded.
Manchester United suspended their player on the day he was arrested in January 2022, which came hours after deeply disturbing images and audio were made available online.
A mixture of photographs and audio clips were posted in the early hours of the morning after the striker had ended his relationship with the alleged victim. The content included pictures which appeared to show a woman with a number of injuries, one of them with blood flowing from her mouth.
It was accompanied by a caption which read: “To everyone who wants to know what Mason Greenwood actually does to me.” A disturbing audio file was also uploaded in which a male voice could be heard trying to coerce a distressed female into having sex.
The court of public opinion kicked in hard, as it also did in the Belfast case, and social media became every bit as charged and relevant to the futures of the athletes as any courtroom outcome.
“In arriving at this decision, the Irish Rugby Football Union and Ulster Rugby acknowledge our responsibility and commitment to the core values of the game – respect, inclusivity and integrity,” said a statement after the acquitted Ulster pair were sacked.
At Manchester United, chief executive Richard Arnold issued an open letter, replete with platitudes, which said the club had considered holding on to Greenwood but had changed its mind.
“Reintegration was one of the outcomes we considered and planned for,” he said, amid reports earlier this month that United’s senior staff had been briefed about a return for the forward.
Then, this week, a senior United staff member was reportedly addressing the Greenwood saga in terms of losing an entity referred to as “a £100m asset”. It was a glimpse into the cold business of corporate United and it begged the question of where the “duty of care” Arnold had mentioned in his statement really lay.
Rachel Riley, the co-presenter of long-running television gameshow Countdown, said she would stop supporting the club if it allowed Greenwood to return. She told her 684,000 Twitter followers: “I won’t be able to support United if Greenwood remains at the club. We’ve all seen and heard enough. Pretending this is OK would be a huge part of the problem.”
Demonstrations took place outside Old Trafford during the Premier League game against Wolves with pictures of the protesters caught in front of a jarring banner hanging from the stadium with current team players covering their ears, and mouth . . . hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil.
The week has shown how sometimes “stakeholder voice” can be a changing force. The experiences, perspectives and insights of those affected by club operations and their business relationships include community members, workers, consumers and fans, who probably have more impact than they imagine.
It is the stakeholders who ultimately determine whether this ethical stand will last or not. Manchester United finally read the room, realised Greenwood staying would be a wound that would fester, and so they changed their view. His return would have been perceived unfavourably by a sizeable amount of stakeholders and the project to rehabilitate him into the squad would likely have been doomed to failure.
It is one of the imponderables as to why the club took so long in coming to understand how their prized player had, in public relations terms, become a toxic brand.
People understand and respect the legal process. People also have their own views and are happy to share them. And they say nothing can stand in the way of voices calling for change.
In the eyes of the law Greenwood, Jackson and Olding did nothing wrong. But there is one strand of the law and many strands of justice. On that the stakeholders spoke, whether through a megaphone or on social media, and they collectively agreed that Greenwood should not return.
