A MAN has told how how he stopped playing for Daisy Hill youth football team after being abused by the manager Michael Coleman.

Giving evidence at Bolton Crown court, the witness told a jury how he was aged about 12 in the early 1980s when he suffered a thigh muscle strain.

Coleman, now aged 75, is said to have offered to give him physiotherapy at Westhoughton Sports Centre, where he worked as the manager, after school and following training sessions.

But the treatment went further than the boy expected.

The witness told how Coleman took him into a room by the showers where there was a heat lamp. While the boy sat on a bench Coleman knelt beside him.

"As he was rubbing my leg his hands went under my shorts. He pushed my hands away and then carried on," he said.

He added that Coleman touched his groin area twice under his shorts for a second or two during the 20 minute session.

Neither said anything and the boy did not reveal what had happened to anyone.

He told the court that the abuse happened in the same way on at least two more occasions.

"He took me into the room and exactly the same happened as on the first occasion," said the witness.

"It didn't feel right. He had sweat dripping off him.

"It was like he was getting off doing that. I was a child. I didn't understand what he was doing."

He added that Coleman would "insist" on boys in the team stripping naked and taking a shower at the sports centre.

"You would take your underwear off and then he would show you how to wash yourself," he said.

The man said he left the club, a short time after the alleged abuse, because of Coleman.

He said that he was "scared" so he didn't reveal what had happened to him to anyone, apart from to a stranger on holiday, until police contacted him.

Coleman, of Glaister Lane, Breightmet, denies indecently assaulting two boys.

On Monday the court heard from a man who claimed that, when he was aged 12, Coleman had forced his head into his groin to perform a sex act after they were alone in the changing rooms at the sports centre.

Yesterday, the boy's mother told a jury how his behaviour changed at around that time and he went from being a high achiever in school to having difficulties and, in later years, turning to alcohol and gambling.

She told the court that she knew nothing of the alleged abuse he had suffered until around 10 years ago when, in a drunken, emotional state, he talked to her.

"He actually said to me 'I have something to tell you mum', and that's when he told me that he had been sexually abused, but he wouldn't say who by," she said.

In the wake national reports about abuse of child footballers, her son decided to contact police and he then revealed what had happened to him.

The trial continues.