A TALENTED footballer who turned to drug dealing has been jailed for stabbing a man in East Oxford.

Benjamin Hepburn, who had played as a youngster at Fulham Football Club, turned to pushing cocaine after work as a part-time model dried up, Oxford Crown Court heard yesterday.

The 22-year-old former Didcot Town player, who also spent time at Oxford United according to his barrister, attacked student Matthew Hope outside the Hobgoblin pub in Cowley Road last month after a drug deal turned sour.

Jonathan Stone, prosecuting, said Hepburn, of Spooner Close, Headington, had sold £40 of cocaine to one of Mr Hope’s friends in Oxford’s Kukui nightclub on September 29, but the drugs turned out to be “fake or of extremely poor quality”.

Two weeks later, on October 13, Mr Hope and his friends planned to meet Hepburn for more drugs and intended to run off without paying “so that they were even”, Mr Stone said.

The group met Hepburn near the smoking area of the Hobgoblin in Bullingdon Road, but as Mr Hope’s two friends suddenly ran off towards Iffley Road, the victim was “caught on the back foot” and was chased towards Cowley Road by Hepburn.

In Mr Hope’s witness statement, read out in court, the 20-year-old said he tried to body swerve away but felt Hepburn hit him in the stomach”.

He thought at first he had been punched, but after running down a side street and hiding behind a car “I could feel a damp sogginess” as blood poured through his clothes.

Mr Hope, who “could easily have died” according to Recorder Hodge Malek, was treated at the John Radcliffe Hospital and needed emergency surgery to a punctured lung. He is expected to make a full recovery.

Hepburn, who caught a taxi away from the scene, was arrested shortly afterwards at home and found with the bloody three-inch kitchen knife in his duvet.

Sophie Murray, defending, handed the judge a bundle of references for her client and said: “This is a young man who had a bright future.

“He is a loving and caring member of his family who gave up his university career to help with his nan and support his mother in a time of difficulty.

“He cannot find a reason for what he did. It’s a surreal experience and one he deeply regrets.”

Miss Murray added: “The modelling dried up and that’s what took him into the world of drug dealing”.

Recorder Malek jailed Hepburn, who had earlier admitted wounding with intent, for four years and described it as “a tragedy for everybody concerned”.