Six year sentence for man who stabbed to death Arsenal fan Sam Fitzgerald with broken golf club

A man who stabbed a football fan to death with a broken golf club outside an Islington pub during an Arsenal V Spurs match was sentenced to six years in prison this morning.

Anthony Leader, 22, of Sidmouth Street, King’s Cross, who admitted the manslaughter of Sam Fitzgerald, 20, at the Old Bailey yesterday could serve just half of his sentence behind bars.

The pair became involved in a fight outside the Thornhill Arms, in Wynford Road, on April 14 2010.

Minutes after the match kicked off at 8pm, both men were seen topless and brawling outside the establishment.

But as Leader began to get the worst of the fight, jurors heard how he picked up a golf club lying on the ground.

Cripsin Aylett QC, prosecuting, said: “He struck Samuel Fitzgerald with such force that it snapped in half.

“The fight continued and to onlookers it might have seemed they were simply trading punches.

“But the defendant was using the jagged edges of the broken shaft of that golf club as if it was a dagger.

“He stabbed Samuel Fitzgerald in the chest and pushed it to the depth of 15 centimetres.

Mr Fitzgerald, an Arsenal supporter who lived with his mother on the Priory Heights Estate, off Wynford Road, Islington, was pronounced dead at 10.30pm that night, following surgery at Royal London Hospital.

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