Laura Woods has called for Ivan Toney to be given ‘help’ following his eight-month ban from football.
The Brentford striker was charged with 232 breaches of the FA’s betting rules in November.
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As a result, he will be unable to play football or train until January 2024 and has been slapped with a £50,000 fine.
The England international has also been diagnosed with a gambling addiction, leading his sanction to be reduced by three months.
But talkSPORT Breakfast host Woods and Andros Townsend believe the FA should do more to support Toney through his addiction, rather than just stripping him of his livelihood for a prolonged period of time.
Ex-Everton winger Townsend was also charged for betting in 2013 under the same regulations, and he opened up on what he called a ‘crippling temptation’ to gamble.
Unlike Toney, the former Crystal Palace star was handed a 12-month suspended ban and was ordered to attend counselling as part of his punishment.
When asked about his own experience of being confessing to gambling by Woods on talkSPORT Breakfast on Monday, Townsend revealed: “I was just as I was coming through, I was out on loan quite a bit.
“I was in hotels on my own, I was single at the time. There was a big gambling culture at Leeds. I knew beforehand I had an addictive personality, I knew I needed to avoid gambling, I knew I needed to avoid drinking.
“But for some reason I just got sucked in and it just spiralled over the course of a year, two years where all I was doing was betting on an app. It didn’t feel like real money. It just felt like games.
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“I got charged with 76 accounts of illegal bets, not on my team, but teams in my division, which was illegal. I thought I was going to get banned, I thought my career was over before it had even started.
“I was thankful in that situation that the FA saw I had a massive problem, they didn’t throw the book at me. They went down the rehabilitation route. I had to go to the FA and put my case before a panel. Nothing was released, nobody knew anything.
“They said they wanted to kind of help me, not turn public opinion against me before they made their decision. At the same time it was Luis Suarez’s racism case against Patrice Evra and lots of stuff was getting leaked.
“They did that because they wanted public opinion against Luis Suarez before they made their decision. So it confuses me why stuff was getting leaked in Ivan Toney’s cases. Similar to mine, this person clearly has an issue, why are you not helping this guy?
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“Why are you throwing him to the wolves? Why are you turning public opinion against him before we’ve even heard the true story? For me it doesn’t sit well.”
He continued: “How can you ban someone for eight months and training with their club? All that will do is make them have more time on their hands and force them to bet even more and go more into a spiral.”
Following his ban, Toney shared an image of him with his finger to his lips on social media with the caption ‘Cream always rises remember that. Back soon.’
His mini-statement came after he promised his supporters he will ‘speak soon with no filter’.
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Like Townsend, Woods feels as though Toney will feel let down by the FA, and will now be reluctant to help them tackle what appears to be a wider issue in football.
“If I was anyone in power there I would’ve spoken to Toney and got him to speak to other players currently,” she said. “When do you ever get to hear from a current player? Especially someone like Toney who has a huge England career ahead of him aswell.
“The comparison of punishments in football is incredibly warped. People forget that because your footballers and you’re on our screens, we forget how old you are an how influential you can be as well.
“There’s footballers I know from the past that got taken out of education very early. You’re isolated, you don’t have your chance to make mistakes in school or socialise or development certain social traits. You’re put into this environment where you’re cut off from everything else and it can be quite lonely.
“What happens? You get on your phone. The door is open. You’ve got money to spend but you don’t know the value of money anymore because you’ve been given so much. So you’re putting a kid into a toy shop and there’s no one around.
“What do you expect that kid to do? I just think in this kind of situation where there is someone that genuinely needs help, help him.
“From what I hear now from Ivan Toney, he feels incredibly let down by the system, so he’s not going to want to help [the FA].”
