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Richard Keogh

Interesting ethical debate on Derby sacking injured Captain Richard Keogh.
He was pissed up backseat passenger (not wearing seatbelt) in car driven by pissed up player, racing another pissed up player after a club night out. They crashed and legged it leaving him unconscious at the scene.
They have been banned from driving and fined criminally and fined by the club, but are back playing, while Keogh's injuries are so severe it's likely he will be out for 66% of his remaining contract.
Club offers him reduced wage to stay on for his rehabilitation, which he refuses and they promptly sack him.
So has he been harshly treated as the players with criminal records are eased back in...but the man injured by them (albeit everyone was pissed up) gets an ultimatum to cut his wages or get the tin-tack for 'gross misconduct'?
Should Derby have sacked all of them or none of them?
Should he have taken the wage cut as he rehabilitated and thought himself lucky?
Are the club being fair in thinking he's got himself injured outside of the pitch via his own stupidity (so I assume not insured?) cannot play for many months so should take a pay cut or bugger off?

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Comments

  • I thought his injury was longer than his remaining contract?

    Seems strange on the surface, but I'm sure there's plenty we don't know. No doubt he had more responsibilities as captain as well.

  • Derby should have sacked the driver/instigator and Keogh should have accepted the reduced wage + rehabilitation IMHO.

  • Guy deserves sacking, a complete and utter moronic situation. He’s lucky to be alive and shouldn’t expect his employer to compensate him financially.

  • I suppose..the younger players have been punished and are a saleable asset to be 'rehabilitated' into the squad to help the team and or be flogged, whereas Keogh is an old player who should have known better and who they suspect may be unlikely to play at Championship level again.

  • Exactly that. They should all have been sacked, but it was more sound financially to rehabilitate the youngsters.

  • He is 33 who, as captain and representative of the club, should set an example to the other players. I think he was lucky to even be offered another contract albeit on lower wages.

  • The cut pay offer sounds questionable on the face of it - what you did was really bad so you're fired unless, of course, you take a lower wage - but the two may not have been linked in this way if, as suggested, his injuries meant he was not so effective a player. But you then wonder how it came to be that one is held responsible for injuries caused by someone else's driving...

    As @username says, I'm sure there's more to it than this and I've insufficient information to make a judgement. As usual.

  • Indeed @HCblue I would ahve thought the club would be on dodgy ground offering him an ultimatum and then sacking him when he refused, but as @Username points out there may be other issues that have been kept in-house. As the two fellas pleaded guilty nothing much came out in court...in fact there was someone else involved who received facial injuries who has not been named...

  • Over 300 games over seven years
    Injured in a car accident
    On a high salary
    No short term value to his employer
    No long term value to his employer
    Long term employee sacked under dubious circumstances as a cost saving measure
    Feels utterly disgraceful to me.

  • A former Wycombe player is Richard Keogh. Anyone remember his 3 appearances in 2005?

  • Keogh contributed significantly to his own injury by getting pissed, getting into a car driven by someone over the legal limit and failing to wear a seat belt. This was no unavoidable accident, but a series of stupid decisions by someone old enough to know better. As club captain he had a duty to lead by example - some example that turned out to be.
    As he is no longer able to fulfill his contractural duty to his employer by attending training and being available to play football, all he can expect is the sack. It's what would happen in any other profession if you caused injuries to yourself that left you unable to do your job.
    I've no sympathy for him or for that matter the other two players either.

  • I think in most jobs the behaviour of all of them could be construed as bringing the club/organisation into disrepute and therefore gross misconduct and a sackable offence.

    The captain/supervisor would also be expected to have a higher degree of responsibility regardless of whether it was actually ‘at work’ and a work-sanctioned event is a very grey area (as I have discovered)), so being treated differently to the others would not be unusual.

    I personally think he should have taken the offer on the chin, as (admittedly without knowing the details) dismissal was always a legitimate possibility.

    But I agree it would have been interesting if hdd Ed had been the driver and one of the others had been in the back and there hadn’t been quite the financial incrntives

  • 6 months left on his contact, out for 12 months injured. If a player has an injury in the pitch the club should look after him. If he went out on the lash and got him self and some teammates into trouble I'm not sure the obligation is on the club. He can't do his job and that is down to his behaviour. Insurers and lawyers will decide if he gets anything but it's hard to argue he deserves it.

    The whole not sacking assets discussion is understandable and hypocritical but does he deserve thousands a week for doing nothing having discraced himself and his club?

  • edited October 2019
  • Derby look totally morally bankrupt here.
    If you're sacking the guy who didn't actually commit a crime, how on earth can you not sack the guys who did.

    Oh I forgot, he's injured, and on a higher salary, with no sell on value.

    Outrageous opportunism from Derby, thinly veiled as doing the "right thing"

    He'll sue, and he'll get a fair whack. Undoubtedly.

  • @Malone said:
    Derby look totally morally bankrupt here.
    If you're sacking the guy who didn't actually commit a crime, how on earth can you not sack the guys who did.

    Oh I forgot, he's injured, and on a higher salary, with no sell on value.

    Outrageous opportunism from Derby, thinly veiled as doing the "right thing"

    He'll sue, and he'll get a fair whack. Undoubtedly.

    Whatever the fair whack he gets, I'm sure it'll be less than the combined sale values of Lawrence and Bennett, so being extremely cynical, that's probably the calculation they've made.

  • All three should have been sacked. Reprehensible stuff.

  • @drcongo said:
    All three should have been sacked. Reprehensible stuff.

    The driver might be a different case but if one's to be sacked without question as a reprehensible citizen for getting pissed there will be some empty workplaces coming.

    I'm pretty stunned by the assumptions some on this thread are making.

  • @HCblue said:

    @drcongo said:
    All three should have been sacked. Reprehensible stuff.

    The driver might be a different case but if one's to be sacked without question as a reprehensible citizen for getting pissed there will be some empty workplaces coming.

    I'm pretty stunned by the assumptions some on this thread are making.

    Yeah I must admit I'm struggling to see exactly why Keogh's "crime" is sackable.

    Unless he was pouring the booze down the other's throats and insisted they drove?

  • @Malone said:

    @HCblue said:

    @drcongo said:
    All three should have been sacked. Reprehensible stuff.

    The driver might be a different case but if one's to be sacked without question as a reprehensible citizen for getting pissed there will be some empty workplaces coming.

    I'm pretty stunned by the assumptions some on this thread are making.

    Yeah I must admit I'm struggling to see exactly why Keogh's "crime" is sackable.

    Unless he was pouring the booze down the other's throats and insisted they drove?

    If I was the 30 something team leader / supervisor at work and I went on a work trip with two junior colleagues, I'd expect to get in big trouble in that situation. It's literally partly his responsibility to try help the younger team members / set an example - he should have not let them drive and just ordered cabs, not jumped in for a lift. I'd expect the other two to get sacked as well though mind.

  • They should have all been sacked

    Not treating them in the same manner I believe could come back to bite Derby. I think from my limited knowledge (more than it used to be) that if Keogh takes them to an industrial tribunal he has a fair chance of winning

    Their market value and the lack of his could be shown that this meant he was treated in a different manner to the other 2

    I don't think that will go down well with a tribunal.

    My experience (from an employers side) is you have to be whiter than white the way you handle these situations and from what has been reported Derby look like they have left themselves open

  • I would imagine there's more to this story than that which is in the public domain

  • @eric_plant said:
    I would imagine there's more to this story than that which is in the public domain

    Quite.

  • @HCblue said:

    @drcongo said:
    All three should have been sacked. Reprehensible stuff.

    The driver might be a different case but if one's to be sacked without question as a reprehensible citizen for getting pissed there will be some empty workplaces coming.

    I'm pretty stunned by the assumptions some on this thread are making.

    The other two for drunk driving (I once lost a good mate to a drunk driver hit and run, I assume you haven't), and Keogh for absolutely failing in his duties as either a professional football player or club captain.

  • edited October 2019

    Regardless of emotion and absent more information, I see no connection at all between one's duties as a professional footballer, or even club captain, and being a passenger in a car being driven by someone over the legal limit.

  • There's a few fairly hefty unsubstantiated rumours doing the rounds that would massively change things.

  • @HCblue said:
    Regardless of emotion and absent more information, I see no connection at all between one's duties as a professional footballer, or even club captain, and being a passenger in a car being driven by someone over the legal limit.

    Really? Club captain at a club event has no connection to fellow players he was getting hammered with and arranging to get home with?

  • Not in the manner being suggested, no. There seems to be some confusion between idealised imagined behaviour and the real world.

  • Bizzare. In a real world scenario, you go to a work do in a public location .with colleagues as maybe a supervisor or team leader, get hammered, turn down provided taxis, jump in a car with more junior staff members, several people get hurt, drag the company through the press and are unable to work for months, even beyond the time you were due to be employed for.
    As a contractor you'd get the bounce immediately, no questions asked. As a permanent staff member you probably also get the elbow if there's a hint of bad pr, there'll be a contract clause, something nice and generic about appropriate conduct befitting the organisation, damaging reputation etc, quick meeting in front of a senior staff member from an independent department, P45, seen it at least twice in the last few years.

  • edited October 2019

    Leaving aside the considerable number of factual assumptions made in your post, you are confusing how things can go in the modern working world and the making of value judgements about the morality of the actions being discussed, the latter being the subject of my previous comments. That the latter is an unspoken part of the former is a larger conversation that I am not minded to go into now for fear of going too far off topic.

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