I’ve been stupid, but I knew I was going to jail... I even took my washbag to court Says Rugby League legend LEON PRYCE

SUNDAY MIRROR

getting away from that and I wouldn’t want to suggest anything otherwise. “It’s vital people understand that. “When it happened a lot of people thought I was lucky to escape jail and maybe that’s the case, because people have been to prison for things like this.

“Right up until the day of the sentencing, I was expecting and anticipating that to happen.

“I even took my washbag with me to court, planning to not come out of that courtroom without going to prison in the back of a police van.

“People think you’ve got off lightly because you haven’t gone to jail, but I carried what I did that night with me for a good 10 or 11 years before I could begin to let it go.

“You hold it against yourself and it made me a really defensive and guarded person and it’s changed my life for ever – and I probably deserve that for what I did.

“We were a young family and I’d gone and done something stupid, which will be with us forever.

“It wasn’t until I went to Catalans that I was able to let it go.

“But this isn’t a sob story and I don’t want to come across asking for sympathy and sounding like I don’t deserve what came my way.

“Believe me, I deserved every single bit of the punishment and the negative spotlight I managed to attract.” Six years later, Pryce was again in the dock alongside Reardon – but he doesn’t feel that the spotlight the case earned was justified this time. He said: “People have asked me whether I feared the worst about going to prison, given how close I was the first time, and I had this blot on my card from the past. “But this time I honestly wasn’t. “I knew it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as the first incident – in context, it was far less. “I was a lot more optimistic that prison wasn’t going to be a realistic option because I saw everything that happened and I knew the full story. “In my opinion, it wasn’t worthy of anything, but we’re sports stars, aren’t we? Maybe they wanted to make an example of us.”