Rugby player, 17, hit with golf club by Asian youths in racist attack
A TEENAGE rugby player about to go on a scholarship to America was mowed down by a car and battered with a golf club in a brutal race hate attack.
Matthew Hayden, 17, has had his sporting dreams shattered after the assault left him with a fractured skull and bleeding in the brain.
The unprovoked attack by a gang of Asian men in the early hours of Saturday is being treated as a racially motivated hate crime.
Matthew, who plays as a lock for Littleborough rugby union club near Manchester and recently made his debut for the senior team, was still in hospital last night.
He will not be able to go on the scholarship and could be forced to give up all contact sports for several years, his club said.
The attack took place after Matthew had been out with his friend Josh Jones, captain of Littleborough’s colts team, and another teenager, in Mr Jones’s Vauxhall Corsa. They are understood to have been driving between friends’ houses.
After leaving a petrol station in Milnrow at about 2am on Saturday, Mr Jones’s car was followed for around a mile and a half by a black Nissan Micra.
The Micra then rammed into Mr Jones’s car and, when Matthew got out, he was driven at and thrown over the Micra’s roof.
It is believed he was not seriously hurt by the car but was then set upon by a group of up to five Asian men.
The gang shouted racial abuse and struck him over the head with a metal golf club, police said. Mr Jones, 18, was trapped in the driver’s seat and was attacked with a crowbar through the window, causing ‘significant hand and facial injuries’. Zac Madden, the third teenager in Mr Jones’s car, escaped unharmed.
Matthew, who had blood gushing from his head, was taken to Royal Oldham Hospital before being transferred to Salford Royal Hospital for emergency surgery.
The rugby player, who has an elder brother and a younger sister, was described by his family as ‘caring, loyal, with a gentle nature’. The teenager, whose mother is a purchasing manager and whose father runs a property design business, was ‘excited’ about the scholarship and is ‘now devastated it has been taken away from him’, his family said.
They said he was ‘always the first to help anybody in need’, adding that he was one of the first people to go out on to the M62 to help motorists stranded in the snow earlier this year during the ‘ Beast from the East’.
Matthew had been working as an apprentice at an engineering firm and was due to enrol on a business studies course, as well as play rugby, on the American scholarship.
He had not yet chosen which university to study at but had planned to start in September.
Aaron Jones, of Littleborough RUFC, where Matthew has played since the age of 12, said: ‘It has shocked everyone at the club. Matthew and Josh are down- to- earth lads, they’re not trouble-makers.
‘Everyone is relieved they are all right. Matthew knows he is lucky to be alive and we just want those who did this to be caught.’
He added that Matthew is now ‘up and talking’ in hospital and is receiving visitors.
The attackers were said to be four or five Asian men, of thin build and either in their late teens or early 20s.
Greater Manchester Police described the attack as ‘brutal and unprovoked’ and said Matthew had received ‘lifechanging injuries’.
‘Lucky to be alive’