A MAN charged with a public order offence after Accrington Stanley's match at York City will NOT be banned from football matches.

John Graeme Heywood was arrested and charged in the wake of York City's home match last month.

Heywood of Boundary Road, Accrington, pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing, and the Crown Prosecution Service applied for a football banning order to be made against him which would ban him from all professional football matches countrywide.

But at York Magistrates Court last Friday, prosecutor Ann Darwin dropped that application.

She said: "There are a number of statements that claim the defendant had not actually attended the match and was not involved with any group of supporters."

Heywood, 43, was arrested by police on Saturday 25 March after he was seen to throw punches in a scuffle in St Helen's Square.

But Heywood's solicitor Victoria Latham said her client was "not part of the football match and not part of the crowd."

She added: "The purpose of his visit to York was to attend a friend's birthday pub crawl."

Heywood, who has no previous convictions, was given a conditional discharge and ordered to pay £50 court costs for the public order offence.

Two men from York still face banning orders.

Timothy David Mercer, 39, of Linton Street, and Luke John Walters, 19, of Harton, near Barton-le-Willows, will both oppose the orders at separate hearings in May.