STUART Thurgood, captain of Grays Athletic when they won the FA Trophy in 2006, has been jailed for eight years for drug offences.
The 39-year-old, who also played for Thurrock, was one of eight ringleaders of an organised crime group in Essex which supplied cocaine to county lines gangs.
A former Spurs trainee who made 79 appearances for Southend United, Thurgood joined Grays in 2003 and was part of the legendary side that rose from the Isthmian Premier League to the brink of the Football League under Mark Stimson, winning back-to-back FA trophies along the way.
A combative midfielder, he was hailed as a “formidable player” by Stimson, who subsequently signed him for Gillingham. However, a serious injury in November 2008 forced his retirement from the professional game at the age of 28.
Thurgood returned to Grays and continued to play semi-pro for a number of sides at Step 3, ending his career with Thurrock in 2017.
Off the pitch, however, Thurgood was working as the right-hand man of Christopher Golding, the leader of an operation that smuggled cocaine in containers through ports before selling it on to gangs supplying West Essex, Hertfordshire, London and Suffolk.
The gang is estimated to have made £500,000 from the scheme, which was laundered through bitcoin and a pub run by Golding.
Tipped off by members of the public, officers arrested two members of the organisation in 2018, whilst Thurgood was one of 19 people apprehended during a series of dawn raids in October last year.
Eight were tried at Chelmsford Crown Court, all pleaded guilty, and they received sentences totalling 40 years.
DCI Basford, prosecuting, said: “The scale of their operation was huge.”
