As football players go, Joey Barton isn’t one of the game’s more likeable characters.

Although not entirely awful on the pitch, as a career that has included Manchester City, Newcastle United and Rangers testifies, his overall attitude and ability to annoy others have made him widely hated.

I’ve lost track of the amount of times he has been in trouble with the authorities for doing something stupid or saying something moronic. He is the king of self-inflicted career damage.

And, at first glance, it looks very much as though his latest run-in with the authorities is yet another case of him only having himself to blame.

In case you missed it, last week Barton was handed an 18-month ban from the game for breaking the Football Association’s betting rules. Over a 10-year period he placed 1,260 bets on football matches, including a number of games in which his team was involved.

Although he never bet on anything he could directly influence, the fact that he backed his own team to lose certain matches (out of spite, when he wasn’t playing) hardly put him in a good light.

But while I agree he should be punished because rules are rules, I think Barton’s ban is ridiculously disproportionate and grossly unfair.

Modern football and betting go hand in hand. Teams are sponsored by betting companies, gambling adverts are shown before, during and after games on television, and billboards around the grounds are constantly urging people to have a wager.

For someone who has a gambling addiction – which Barton readily admits he does – to have to ply his trade in that sort of environment is exceptionally hard. So on the one hand you have the FA, Premier League, Football League and all their clubs more than happy to push the concept of betting, but when one of their ‘employees’ gets addicted to it, they hang him out to dry.

Which brings me to another point. Rather than ban him from the game – which is only going to give him more free time to gamble – shouldn’t they be more focussed on helping him beat his addiction?

Let’s also put Barton’s actions into some sort of context: footballers caught using performance enhancing drugs have received shorter bans than Barton’s. So a player who is clearly trying to alter the outcome of a game gets away with a six-month ban and a whole lot of sympathy, while someone who is addicted to betting but never tried to influence a match gets 18 months?

It just doesn’t make sense.

Once again, I am not saying Barton should have got off without punishment. He broke the rules and – whether you agree with them or not – he was aware that he was breaking them.

But to kick the player out of sport for a year and half – and considering he is 34, that just about ends his career – is excessive, unfair and reeks of the authorities taking advantage of an opportunity to punish a player they never liked.

Barton is going to appeal the decision, as you would imagine. And there is always a chance the ban may be reduced to a more sensible level, such as three months perhaps.

But given how the FA stick rigidly to the rules when it suits them, I wouldn’t bet on it…

Boxing fights back

Up to a couple of decades ago heavyweight boxing was a fascinating sport.

When you had the likes of Mike Tyson, Lennox Lewis, Evander Holyfield and George Foreman in the ring, any world title fight was a must-watch event. And I didn’t miss many.

Then it all got a bit boring, to be honest. The same few boxers dominated the sport year after year and the challengers were either weak, terminally unexciting or borderline nuts.

Then last Saturday happened.

With nothing better to do I decided, on a whim, to try and find the Anthony Joshua vs Vladimir Klitschko fight online.

I found it. I watched it. And I loved it.

This was heavyweight boxing of yesteryear all the way down to the fascinating backstories: in one corner, Joshua, the young kid who turned his back on a life of crime to take up the sport while still living with his mum. In the other corner, Klitschko, the man who had dominated the sport for a decade and defended his title no less than 23 times in the process.

Throw in 90,000 fans inside a packed Wembley, a whole month of pre-fight hype and a bunch of excited commentators, and it was like watching a real-life version of Rocky.

But even then, the fighters needed to deliver. And they did.

Klitschko was put on the canvas in the fifth before the same happened to Joshua in the sixth. In fact, to all intents and purposes, at that point it looked like the stunned youngster was heading for defeat.

But Joshua used the next couple of quiet rounds to catch his breath and then came out with a blistering attack in the 11th which floored Klitschko twice before the referee ended the contest with the Ukrainian being battered on the ropes.

Wow.

This fight was exactly what heavyweight boxing needed to reignite its spark, rediscover its purpose and get casual fans like me back on board.

Now I just can’t wait for the next one.

sportscolumnist@timesofmalta.com
Twitter: @maltablade