This is not going quite as expected. We are sitting in the boardroom at Victoria Road, home of Dagenham & Redbridge, and the young footballer on the other side of the table is explaining how “harsh” it felt to be banned for six months after the FA, for the second time in a little more than a year, found him guilty of biting an opponent.
The player in question is Joss Labadie, who is due to return from a six-month suspension this afternoon as Dagenham take on Hartlepool United in Sky Bet League Two. Straining at the leash? Chomping at the bit? Labadie would smile politely at the suggestion, but he insists, despite evidence to the contrary, that it was not like that. “I maintain my innocence,” he says.
What follows is undeniably awkward. Rather than an interview with a vampire, offering an insight into what might trigger that most inhuman instinct, it is a strained inquisition of a footballer who is not about to express contrition or bare his soul because, simply, he feels wronged.
We start off by talking about his background, growing up in south London and then Essex, developing into a talented, athletic footballer and being passed over by West Ham United before securing a scholarship with West Bromwich Albion. For a short time, under Tony Mowbray, he felt the door to West Brom’s first-team squad was opening, but then, at the end of his teens, after a couple of spells on loan, came the sudden realisation that it had closed.
“At the time, there was just first team and youth team, nothing between, so there was nowhere to go there,” he says, a familiar lament among English players of his age.
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He joined Tranmere Rovers, then in League One. “One minute you’re training with players like Tomasz Kuszczak and Jonathan Greening and the next minute you’re in League One, but it was great,” Labadie says. “Wherever I’m playing, I’m happy.”
He spent two seasons at Tranmere, the same at Notts County and then joined Torquay United, where the trouble started. On February 15, 2014, he was accused of biting by Ollie Banks during a League Two match against Chesterfield. An FA regulatory commission agreed, banning him for ten games and fining him £2,000. He denied the offence but accepted the punishment — “a sign of guilt”, according to Chris Hargreaves, the Torquay manager at the time.
So what happened? “It was one of those things and there was stuff going on in the box,” Labadie says. “There was pinching and whatever happened happened. Stuff like that goes on in football matches and he has made a complaint against me.”
Yes, Banks posted a picture on Twitter of his chest, seemingly showing bite marks. “He has got a mark on him,” Labadie acknowledges. “I don’t know how he got that, or what incident in the game it was, but he has made a decision [to publicise it] and gone through with it.”
So, rather than regretting the incident, you were disappointed with Banks? “Yes I did feel disappointed,” he says. “But these things happen. It’s all in the past now.”
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You say it is in the past, but it appears to have happened again on March 21 this year, this time playing for Dagenham against Stevenage, whose manager at the time, Graham Westley, claimed that his captain, Ronnie Henry, “nearly lost a finger” in an altercation with Labadie. Do you accept you did something wrong on this occasion? “No,” Labadie says. “He [Henry] put his hand in my mouth and there was contact, but it wasn’t a deliberate bite. I’m sure if the club thought it was deliberate, they wouldn’t be sitting here now, backing me 100 per cent.”
Just to clarify, you say there was contact — but that it wasn’t a bite? “Yes, that’s right,” he says.
Most people looking at this case from a neutral viewpoint, taking into account the previous incident and that you had Henry’s finger in your mouth, would see it the same way the FA commission did, wouldn’t they? “Maybe, yes,” Labadie says. “They probably would. You’re right.”
If you felt aggrieved, why was there no appeal? Steve Thompson, the Dagenham managing director, speaks up on the player’s behalf. “To be fair to Joss, you can’t appeal just because you don’t agree with the decision,” he says. “The commission reached its conclusion on the grounds of probability. No one saw the finger being bitten, so it’s a question of probability. We felt that on the balance of probability, it was more of an accident than a deliberate act. That’s why Joss is here now.
“The easiest thing we could have done was wash our hands of it, but knowing Joss as well as we do, we looked at it the other way. That was a big decision for a small club like ours. Joss is one of our top players and that [keeping him on the payroll while suspended] made a hole in our budget, but we are a family club, a community club, and Joss is a young man with a young family, trying to do the best he can.”
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What is the club’s view of the incident? “There was a tussle and even the police officer said he saw Joss’s head being pulled to one side,” Thompson says.
“So if you’ve got your finger in someone’s mouth and the other person’s head gets tugged, your finger is going to scrape against their teeth. That’s what we felt happened.”
It does sound rather like the claims made on Luis Suárez’s behalf after he bit Giorgio Chiellini during the World Cup last year. “I think it’s different,” Labadie says. “He was caught red-handed, wasn’t he? With me, the footage wasn’t the greatest and the two police officers backed my statement. But it’s in the past. I know we’re sitting here talking about it, but I’m trying to get my head down and just move past it.”
Do you understand why others, like the FA, might not give you the benefit of the doubt? “I just need to get on and prove everyone wrong,” Labadie says. “I know how people perceive me. I just want to show everyone the real me.”
How do you think the public perceive you? “They probably don’t perceive me in a good light,” he says. “They probably perceive me as a thug, which I’m not. I’m a family man. I’ve got two kids. I come to work every day and try to be the best I can.”
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He is, it is worth saying, a polite young man. He is bright too; he is doing a couple of study courses, recommended by the Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA). Off the field, he has no obvious “edge” whatsoever, even if his disciplinary record (60 yellow and two red cards in 200 senior appearances) marks him down as one of those who is far more zealous on the pitch.
Labadie has spoken to a counsellor, again laid on by the PFA, but only, he says, about dealing with the ban, not learning how to avoid trouble in future. After all, he maintains he was unlucky.
The concern is that anyone suffering two such strokes of bad luck might, like Suárez, be unfortunate for a third time. Labadie says he does not know what more he can add. He is only focused on making up for lost time and repaying the faith of those who have stood by him. “It’s in the past,” he says again — and one hopes that this time he is right.