Last updated 09:52, Saturday, 19 April 2008

IF ever an episode required a spot of light after so much damaging heat, it is the Paul Huntington affair.

Paul Huntington celebrates after scoring for Newcastle against Spurs.

To this end we summon a recent photograph from the archives in an attempt to explain what may have been happening in the young man’s head on the day a bright, clean reputation became charred.

It’s a snap from Newcastle’s 3-2 victory at Tottenham in the Premier League on the afternoon of January 14, 2007, and Huntington is framed shuttling down the touchline after scoring his maiden professional goal.

Huntington’s salute – hand cupped to ear, defiant gesture to crowd – is so typical of its day that you could drop the picture into a time capsule and be content that future generations would be getting an accurate lesson on contemporary football.

It is not merely a gesture of celebration, but one of confrontation, and if we’ve seen it once we’ve seen it a hundred times. It is, the closer you look, a modern-day cave drawing on some essential characteristics of today’s game. Punter and player more distant than ever? Tick. Crowds harsher, less forgiving? Tick.

Goals and other moments of success therefore to be brandished at those faraway spectators, instead of merely enjoyed? Tick. Today’s young player in more urgent need of attention than ever before? Another tick, probably.

My contention is that we saw an extreme, mutated version of this when the frenzies of last weekend’s classic League One battle started swirling around Huntington’s head. The Leeds United defender, a son of Carlisle, first jerked out his club badge in the direction of Blues fans at Elland Road as the Yorkshire side assembled a riotous 3-2 comeback victory, before adding – with regulation contorted face – supplementary gestures which have kept the public flames raging in his home city for the past seven days.

People who know Huntington have told me this week that the young man’s brain must have simply defaulted under the Yorkshire sun. They have described a calm-headed, likeable individual whose mental wiring simply blew for one crazy moment. Certainly, nothing in my own conversation with the player last Sunday suggested Huntington was either a bundle of furies or in some way unhinged.

Such was his contrition, also expressed in a 20-minute phonecall to United’s assistant manager Greg Abbott on Wednesday, that you had to ask yourself again and again: where did it come from? Was it more than a temporary explosion – and was it, in fact, evidence of an aggressive pursuit of recognition which only lights up on a football pitch, something we’ve seen in so many more young players than just Huntington?

Let’s waste little time on the boneheaded warnings of physical retribution issued to the 20-year-old and his family this week. Anyone minded to carry out such deeds is several miles below an insolent footballer on the moral mountain.

A personal favourite feature of the public backlash was the archetypal internet warrior who ventured into an online fans’ forum and, via an obscure pseudonym, spat electronic bile at Huntington, aimed threats in his direction and accused him of cowardice.

One man taunts and gestures from the relative safety of the pitch, another abuses and threatens anonymously, from his bedroom. Pick the moral winner there if you can.

Don’t confuse this, please, with an attempt to explain away Huntington’s actions which, for all his apologies, still deserve firm censure. You certainly couldn’t find fault with a single syllable of what Scott Dobie said yesterday on the subject of his half-cousin: “You don’t do that to fans because they don’t forget,” said the Carlisle striker and fellow Cumbrian. “He’s been stupid for doing it and it’s going to be a learning curve for him.”

You trust the ageing process will eventually take care of Huntington’s foolishness. In the meantime, there’s no harm in referring him to a recent speech made by Sir Alex Ferguson on the subject of a modern nuisance.

“What annoys me about some footballers today is the personal glory thing,” said the Manchester United manager. “They score a goal and knock players out of the road so they can get personal gratification and play to the fans.

“The present day footballer needs to be noticed. But people in general need to be noticed, it’s not just footballers.”

Granted, there’s little glory in what Huntington did last Saturday, but he certainly cornered the market in getting noticed. Except it turns out all publicity isn’t necessarily good publicity. It’s a lesson one young footballer has just learned, quite painfully – and one he could do worse than share.