LONDON, 17 December 2003 — Rio Ferdinand has little chance of getting a fair hearing when he appears before a Football Association (FA) disciplinary panel on charges of missing a doping test, the head of the English players’ union warned yesterday.

Gordon Taylor, chief executive of the Professional Footballers’ Association, believes high-profile interventions in the case and the length of time it has taken for the hearing to be organized have prejudiced the Manchester United defender’s chances of a fair trial.

“It was September when this happened,” Taylor said. “It is now nearly the end of the year and it is not over. This is a massive problem. It has been out in the public for people to decide his punishment.”

Ferdinand is due to appear before the disciplinary panel tomorrow with the hearing expected to continue until Friday. He is widely expected to be banned for at least three months.

Taylor maintains that Ferdinand should have been able to answer the charges against him confidentially and only been named if and when he was found guilty of any offense.

Other players have been afford such confidentiality but “Rio has been named and shamed,” the union boss argued.

The FA has denied leaking Ferdinand’s name to the press but it was the governing body’s decision to suspend him from the England squad which brought his failure to take a routine doping test at Manchester United’s training ground in September into the public domain.

Taylor said public comments by FIFA President Sepp Blatter on the case had put the FA under undue pressure to ban Ferdinand.

“FIFA is being pressured by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA),” Taylor claimed. “Initially football said it did not have the problems of athletics and cycling with performance-enhancing drugs but there is pressure now.

“Blatter has changed from saying there is not a problem to saying there is a problem. He’s been in touch with the FA and expressed his opinions in public.

“It is like someone from the House of Lords going to the papers and saying if a certain judgment is not passed we’ll intervene. It’s not the sort of justice we want.

“If you look at the law of consistency, there was a previous case and even WADA says you should not name and shame an individual until there has been a hearing.”