The beautiful game is looking rather tarnished. Football has been making headlines, and not on the sports pages, for all the wrong reasons. In London, police are investigating allegations that a 17-year-old girl was gang-raped by players in the English Premiership. In Yorkshire, Jody Morris, a Leeds United footballer, has been questioned by police investigating an alleged sex assault on a 20-year-old woman. In Cardiff, Craig Bellamy of New-

castle United was fined for a drunken rant outside a nightclub. When the

law is involved, justice must be allowed to take its course free from out-

side influence.

In this sense, it is a long way from the police station and the courtroom to the football training ground. However, footballers selected for England's squad to play Turkey in a critical qualifying match for next year's European championships had threatened to take the law into their own hands in a gesture of solidarity for Rio Ferdinand, a teammate banned from the game by the Football Association. Their threat

to boycott the match, which will

decide which country automatically qualifies for the tournament, was unprecedented. They withdrew the threat last night. It was the proper thing to do. The players believed, and still believe, that Ferdinand had been a victim of injustice on the part of the Football Association. It had decided to name and punish him for failing to take a drug test shortly after he was chosen at random last month to give a sample. He forgot and went shopping instead.

The FA rightly deemed this a serious error on Ferdinand's part because, like other sports, football must do, and be seen to do, everything in its power to keep players clean - and crack down on those who are not. Ferdinand took and passed the test but, under its rules, the FA was obliged to investigate the matter and take action if necessary. With such an important fixture looming, the FA offered Ferdinand the chance to be interviewed - something that must precede any FA charge - at the beginning of this week; he declined. In the circumstances, the FA, perhaps rightly, believed it had no option but to take action. Ferdinand's colleagues should be allowed to speak their mind on the matter, but any action should have stopped with a dignified, verbal protest. Now the game will go ahead

- but the reverberations will continue far beyond Saturday.