Rams player is spared jail

Aiden Faal, 24, of Broadstone Way, Bradford, pleaded guilty to growing 1.88kg of cannabis at his former home in Oxford Road, Gomersal, and using electricity from a nearby property.

Faal, a talented young player for the Shawcross team, admitted the offence at an earlier hearing at Dewsbury Magistrates Court in February.

Police raided his home in Gomersal last October and found the haul, Leeds Crown Court heard.

Anne-Marie Hutton, mitigating, said Faal’s knowledge of growing techniques was ‘relatively amateur’ and he learned about it from a manual he found online.

“This was a modern and sophisticated operation an so far as his knowledge of growing goes, it was relatively amateurish.

“This was displayed by police when they asked him if he knew how the cannabis was dried, but he didn’t know because he had not read that far in the manual.

“This was a one-off piece of stupidity which will not happen again.”

Miss Hutton said that Faal had grown the cannabis ‘to alleviate an existing medical condition’.

Judge Colin Burn said there was ‘no evidence’ that Faal grew the cannabis to supply to other people.

He said: “There is a lot of cannabis but people in your position are known to grow a lot of plants to make sure there is some sort of yield at the end.

“However, this is illegal and the down side for you is that if you carry on with this in the future, you will go to prison. You must – and I underline the word must three times – alleviate your pain using legal methods.

“You are clearly someone who puts in significant amounts of time working in the rugby league community and that is to your credit.”

Faal was sentenced to six months for production of cannabis and eight months for abstracting electricity illegally. However, his sentence has been suspended.