Steven Gerrard: punching man in bar was a mistake

The England footballer Steven Gerrard has apologised for his bar brawl with businessman Marcus McGee, telling Liverpool Crown Court this morning that thumping McGee repeatedly was all a mistake.

The 29-year-old also insisted that he had not lost control on December 28, when the Liverpool FC captain and his friends went out to celebrate his team's 5-1 defeat of Newcastle United, at the Lounge Inn in Merseyside.

Gerrard told the jury that he was used to getting "a lot of mither", or trouble, from abusive members of the public and that he had ways of defusing a potentially violent situation. "I try to deal with it in the best way I can," he told his barrister John Kelsey-Fry QC. "I try to talk to them and smooth it over."

Gerrard, who denies affray, told the court that he punched McGee three times, following a row over the music being played at the bar. But Gerrard insisted that he had thrown his first punch in self-defence, not realising that one of his friends, John Doran, had already hit the 34-year-old businessman.

"I thought he was going to hit me," Gerrard told the court. "He was on his way forward to me and his behaviour had changed from when I was having a discussion with him. I didn't know why." He added that he had been "mistaken" in thinking this. "Now I know, obviously, he had been struck, reacted and thought the strike was by me and he came into me and that's when I reacted. I am sorry about the whole incident."

Earlier when Gerrard went into the witness box Kelsey-Fry QC told the jury and public gallery: "Obviously, there is no need to give an introduction to the captain of Liverpool football club."

The jury had already heard that the footballer estimated he was seven out of 10 on a drunkenness scale. Today he said: "I certainly knew I had had a drink. I was certainly in control of how I felt in my surroundings."

Gerrard, who is the only one of seven original defendants to plead not guilty, also got the chance to explain his side of the argument over a 'music menu'. Claiming that the club's manager had given him permission to choose some music, the footballer said he went over to the laminated list of songs. Gerrard said that as he picked it up, McGee snatched the A4-sized card out of his hands. 

Asked what McGee said to him, Gerrard apologised to the jury for his language before replying: "He said to me: 'You are not putting no fucking music on in here'. I was shocked and tried to speak to him and asked him what his problem was." The trial continues. ·