Shame of Scots rugby stars’ agent after he admits sending sexual messages to ‘girl who was only 15’
A LEADING figure in Scottish rugby has been placed on the sex offenders’ register for sending sleazy messages to someone he thought was a 15-year-old girl.
Gordon Hood acts as an agent for some of the country’s top players including Finn Russell and Stuart Hogg.
But the 39-year-old’s reputation faces ruin after he admitted in court that he had sent messages for his own ‘sexual gratification’ or for the purpose of ‘humiliating, distressing or alarming’ the recipient.
Believing he was talking to an underage girl, Hood sent a string of indecent Facebook messages over a three-day period last year, asking, ‘Is your body quite developed?’ and ‘Have you had sex yet?’.
As well as asking for photographs, he said he wished they could ‘lie together’.
Hood, of Comely Bank in Edinburgh, thought he was talking to a Mary Dundonald when they first exchanged messages on Tinder, then Facebook, last September.
In fact, he was speaking to a selfappointed vigilante ‘paedophile hunter’ – council worker Jim McGuigan – who reported Hood to the police and passed on the messages.
Hood pleaded guilty at Glasgow Sheriff Court to ‘intentionally and for the purpose of obtaining sexual gratification, or of humiliating, distressing or alarming a person he believed to be a 15-year-old girl, sending messages’. He admitted he repeatedly sent ‘sexual written communications’ through Facebook and attempted to communicate indecently with a child between September 21 and 23 last year.
When he appeared for sentencing before Sheriff Valerie Mays Hood was given an eight-month community order, with the condition he is supervised.
He was also placed on the sex offenders’ register for the length of his order.
Last night, Hood apologised for his actions which he said he deeply regretted.
A former pupil at one of Scotland’s leading private schools – George Heriot’s in Edinburgh – and an Aberdeen University graduate, he was crowned Britain’s most eligible bachelor in 2004 and awarded his title by former ‘It Girl’ Tara Palmer Tomkinson in London.
Hood owns the Rugby Partnership sports management company, which counts Hogg and Russell among its clients. On its website, the firm is described as a ‘commercially driven sports management company specialising in elite rugby players’, which is ‘founded on integrity’.
Last week, Mr McGuigan revealed some of the messages exchanged with Hood. In one, when ‘the child’ told Hood that she was 15, she said: ‘I’ll understand if you don’t want to speak to me.’
But Hood replied: ‘That’s cool with me too.’
Even after he became aware she was underage while exchanging messages that they were both hungover, he said: ‘Shame we can’t lie and recover together’ – along with a disappointed face emoji.
Hood asked the girl to send a picture and, after seeing an image of a female, clearly a young teenager, said she was ‘cute’.
He asked the girl if she had had sex yet, told her he worked as a rugby agent and that he was single, because he ‘is fussy’, beside a kiss face emoji.
Mr McGuigan said he had seen other members of the public carrying out similar stings online and decided to give it a try.
When Hood made contact with the girl, perhaps thinking she was over the age of consent and looking for a date, the conversation was moved on to Facebook.
Mr McGuigan said: ‘Very quickly into it, I thought I better make sure he knows what age I’m supposed to be and I told him I was 15, but he carried on speaking.
‘Eventually, I said to him he wasn’t speaking to a 15-year-old and that I was going to report him to the police.
‘He shut everything down on social media that I was using to contact him and that point I phoned the police.’
Mr McGuigan branded Hood’s behaviour ‘revolting’ and said: ‘He was aware what age I was pretending to be.
‘I wasn’t expecting him to continue the conversation when I said I was underage.’
The Scottish Rugby Union declined to comment.
The Mail on Sunday then approached some of Hood’s clients, who also declined to comment.
Yesterday, Hood said: ‘I would like to apologise to my family, friends and clients for the embarrassment that this will cause.
‘I deeply regret my actions. I behaved foolishly and naively on an over-18s dating app and I now have to live with the consequences.’
‘His behaviour was revolting’