The Guardian:
Rooney's agent, Paul Stretford, is to take the Football Association to the High Court over charges brought against him by the game's governing body which relate to how he acquired the England striker's registration.
Lawyers acting for Stretford, of the Proactive Sports Management group, yesterday served papers on the FA claiming their disciplinary proceedings against him are in breach of natural justice and the European Convention on Human Rights. The agent is arguing that the measures are unlawful because the tribunal hearing the case is made up of three members of the FA's disciplinary committee - Barry Bright, Alan Turvey and Richard Tur - and therefore not truly independent.
"Paul vigorously denies all the charges," a spokesman for Proactive said. "He's entirely happy to defend them at a properly constituted tribunal but, given the proposed constitution of this panel, he can see it being no more impartial than a kangaroo court. Effectively, such a tribunal would mean that the FA, as the professional governing body, would be able to act as prosecutor, judge and jury in a hearing which could prejudice the livelihood of Mr Stretford."
Stretford faced the potential removal of his licence over the charges, which related to alleged breaches of the Fifa players' agents regulations and, therefore, FA rules. They were brought citing evidence which emerged during a blackmail case heard at Warrington Crown Court last October. He resigned as a director of Formation Group, the holding group for Proactive, some three days after he was shown to have made false statements to the court, which prompted the collapse of that trial, in which he was the chief prosecution witness.
Two documents subpoenaed from Formation indicated that the prosecution was unable to rely on Stretford as a credible witness, revealing as they did that he had been acting on Rooney's behalf from as early as September 2002, when the teenage Everton forward still had three months left to run on his contract with his original agent Peter McIntosh.