Raith Rovers cup-winning hero Julian Broddle could be fired from the police after failing a drugs test.
Broddle, who played at left back in the famous 1994 League Cup final win over Celtic, tested positive for cocaine while on duty with South Yorkshire Police.
He joined the force after hanging up his boots following a 16-year career with Raith , East Fife, St Mirren and Barnsley, including playing against Bayern Munich during the Kirkcaldy club’s UEFA Cup run.
The 52-year-old provided a urine sample as part of a random drug test after attending its professional standards department on March 19.
He tested positive for the Class A drug and will face a misconduct hearing next week, according to the force.
The force’s website states: “The sample was sent for analysis and Alere Toxicology have informed South Yorkshire Police that PC Broddle tested positively for a Class A drug, namely cocaine.”
The officer is due to attend a special case misconduct hearing where he will answer claims that his conduct was ‘unprofessional and inappropriate and breached the Standards of Professional Behaviour, in particular those paragraphs relating to Discreditable Conduct’.
Most police misconduct hearings have been held in public since last year as part of efforts by the Government to make forces more transparent and accountable.
His case will be heard on the same afternoon as a case relating to Special Police Constable Oliver Paduch, who is accused of posting ‘inappropriate and unacceptable comments of a potentially racist nature on Facebook’.
Both cases on Thursday are special hearings, where the circumstances of the misconduct have already been considered by the force’s deputy chief constable.
A hero on the pitch and in uniform
Broddle came to Scotland after spells in the English lower leagues to sign for St Mirren, before joining Jimmy Nicoll’s Raith Rovers in 1993.
He played more than 70 times, including in the victory in the League Cup final in 1993 and both legs of their subsequent UEFA Cup tie against Bayern Munich.
He stayed in Kirkcaldy for three seasons and retired from football in 1997 after spells at East Fife and Ross County before retiring in 1997.
The medals kept coming after he joined the police as he was twice awarded for bravery, once for facing down a shotgun-wielding gang of masked bank robbers and then for saving a girl from drowning.
