Footballers' Rape Trial: 'Woman Agreed To Sex'

Defence barristers have urged a trial jury not to let any moral repugnance lead them to conclude that two footballers are rapists.

Sheffield United striker Ched Evans and Port Vale defender Clayton McDonald, both 23, are accused of raping a 19-year-old woman in a hotel room last year.

The jury has been told that after seeing the "dangerously intoxicated" woman fall over in kebab shop in Rhyl, McDonald got into a taxi with her to a Premier Inn hotel.

The alleged victim claims she cannot remember the events that followed but recollects waking up naked, alone and confused some hours later.

Mr McDonald's barrister Lloyd Morgan said: "There was nothing in her behaviour, speech and demeanour that led him to believe she was not capable of consent."

The court heard that while McDonald had sex with the woman Ched Evans watched and two friends outside watched through a hotel window, one of them trying to film the activities on a mobile phone.

David Fish QC, for Ched Evans, said: "There will be no medals for gallantry. They left without the usual niceties in circumstances such as this. Clearly times change. Casual liaisons occur and the morals of yesteryear are not the morals of now."

Mr Fish said that although a receptionist at the hotel had heard sounds inside the room there were no cries for help or "Get off me!".

The judge urged the jury to put out of their minds anything they may have heard in the past about the poor behaviour of well-paid footballers.