AN amateur footballer was caught in Cumbria after buying £4,000-worth of cannabis for his team-mates, Carlisle Crown Court has heard.

Yousif Mohammed Ahmad, 26, was on his way back to Glasgow when he was arrested after police found 957 grams of the banned drug stashed under the driver’s seat of his van when he parked at the Tebay services on the M6 on February 9.

He told police he and three of his team-mates had a whip round and sent him to buy cannabis in bulk in Manchester, because there was a shortage of it in Glasgow where they lived.

Ahmad, of Kingston Avenue, Glasgow, pleaded guilty to possessing the illegal drug with intent to supply it.

Judge Paul Batty QC said drug couriers usually got sent to prison, but the circumstances of this case meant a custodial sentence was not justified.

He said he accepted that Ahmad’s team-mates were “all avid cannabis users” and that he would not have benefited financially from the trip.

But he said: “This was a very large amount of cannabis – so great that it is surprising that anybody could see a football, let alone kick it.”

Ahmad was put on probation for a year and made to pay £500 court costs.