ED BALLS unveiled an aggressive cuts strategy - as he left an opponent bloodied in the annual football match between Labour and lobby journalists.
The shadow chancellor was involved in a clash with the Northern Echo's Rob Merrick as the politicians struggled to overturn a one-goal deficit at Manchester City's Etihad complex. The pair were contesting a 50-50 ball on the edge of the journalists' penalty area when a stray elbow from Mr Balls left a gash under the reporter's right eye.
Mr Merrick had to leave the pitch for medical treatment as blood dripped on to his shirt - but later returned to be named man-of-the-match. The Labour team - which featured frontbench stalwarts Andy Burnham, Jim Murphy and Sadiq Khan - eventually went down to a 3-1 defeat. It is the second year running the Labour team has been defeated in the showdown, which is supported by the Football Association and raises funds for charity.
After the match Mr Balls, known as a political bruiser, said he hoped Mr Merrick had not sustained any lasting damage. "I was about to score a brilliant goal," he said. "As I steadied myself to shoot Rob came piling in from behind attempting to nick the ball and came off worst."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article