Football fan who injured own player after throwing seat jailed for 18 months

A football fan who left his own player with a “severe injury” after throwing part of a seat during a Scottish Premiership football match has been jailed for 18 months.

David Gowans, 31, threw the projectile on to the pitch after a league match between Dundee United and Aberdeen at Tannadice on 17 May. It struck Aberdeen’s Jack MacKenzie, who had gone to the area of the ground in front of the travelling fans to thank them for their support. The defender, now with Plymouth Argyle, suffered a “deep 2in laceration” to his left eyebrow and a “5cm abrasion” below his left eye, and has been left “permanently disfigured”.

Father-of-one Gowans, who had been working as an “offshore operator” at the time, had been a member of the Aberdeen ultras supporters’ group. He admitted culpable and reckless conduct in October.

Handing down his sentence at Dundee sheriff court on Monday, sheriff Alastair Carmichael told Gowans: “Your actions were selfish, stupid, dangerous and utterly irresponsible. You must have known that by throwing this item it could hit somebody.” He said: “If you didn’t consider this possibility, the level of recklessness is staggering.”

The judge also told Gowans there was a “bigger picture” to the incident, in that it happened at a football match and could have triggered further disorder in the crowd.

At an earlier hearing the court was shown CCTV footage of the incident, which showed MacKenzie lying on the pitch for some minutes after being struck, being attended to by medical staff. He was taken off the pitch in a wheelchair. The footage showed a large number of Dundee United fans on the pitch nearby, celebrating their team’s win.

Sheriff Carmichael said: “There is no reasonable alternative to a custodial sentence. This is needed because of the gravity of this crime, and it is needed in order to adequately punish you and adequately express the public disapproval of this behaviour, and discourage others from behaving in a similar fashion.”

The sheriff gave Gowans a football banning order barring him from attending football matches for 10 years – which he pointed out was the “maximum period that I can impose”. Gowans has been given a lifetime ban by Aberdeen.

A woman sitting in the public gallery began weeping when the sentence was handed down. Gowans, who appeared in court wearing a dark-coloured suit, waved to the woman as he was being led away to begin his sentence.

Earlier, Gowans’s lawyer Larry Flynn told the court his client had been inebriated at the time he threw the chair, and that he was so drunk he missed the supporters’ bus home to Aberdeen and had to get a taxi. He added that Gowans was “extremely embarrassed” by the incident, and that he accepts “he let himself down and let his football club down”.

At an earlier hearing, Dundee sheriff court was shown text messages Gowan sent to Aberdeen’s supporter liaison officer Lynn Fisk, in which he admitted he had thrown the seat. In one message, which was shown to the court, he said he “wasn’t aiming at anything or anyone” and that the section of seat had just been “there right next to me”. In another message he said it had been “a disastrous mistake”.