Jail for ex-footballer who sold cocaine

A FORMER professional footballer who became a town’s main cocaine supplier was jailed for four years and three months yesterday.

Martin Maher, 27, played ten times as a teenager for St Johnstone in the Scottish Premier League and later became a director in his family’s groundworks business in Auchterarder, Perthshire.

Last year, he was caught by a police surveillance operation after detectives had received intelligence that he was involved in drug-dealing.

Cocaine worth up to £78,250 on the streets was recovered during the investigation.

Maher admitted being concerned in the supplying of cocaine over three years, from 2007 to 2010.

The High Court in Edinburgh heard he was “a principal supplier of cocaine to users in Auchterarder at the time of his arrest”.

All the purchasers knew him, usually through local football teams, school connections or work. Some worked for his family’s firm, and he deducted the cost of the cocaine from their wages.

The defence counsel, John Hamilton, said Maher had a profile in the town, because of his football career and his position in the business.

He never used drugs himself, but his brother had had a problem, and he found people continually coming to him to ask if he could supply small, user amounts of cocaine to them.