Amar Dedic to Start Against Fulham Despite Police Incident

Newcastle’s Amar Dedic is set to keep his place in the team this weekend despite becoming the unlikely centre of a major police operation in rural Northumberland after being spotted carrying a bow and arrow.

The 24-year-old Bosnia right-back is expected to start against Fulham on Saturday, with Newcastle not planning any club sanction following the incident, which escalated into a pursuit involving an armed response unit and six patrol cars.

The alarm was raised on Wednesday afternoon when a member of the public reported seeing two men walking along a track by a reservoir on the Military Road in the Harlow Hill area, each carrying what appeared to be a bow and arrow. In a country still highly sensitive to reports of weapons in public, that was enough to trigger a significant response.

Northumbria Police dispatched officers to the scene and began tracking a vehicle linked to the pair. The pursuit ended in Darras Hall, the affluent estate just outside Ponteland where a number of Newcastle players live, including Dedic. Officers stopped the car and seized the bows and arrows from its boot.

The force later confirmed they were satisfied there had been no malicious intent.

In a statement, Northumbria Police said the equipment was “for recreational use and there was no threat to the public”, though they added that inquiries remain “on-going”. There is no suggestion that Dedic or his companion were hunting, but the context matters: using bows, arrows or crossbows to pursue animals is illegal in the UK, and any hint of that carries serious implications.

“Shortly after 1.55pm on Wednesday we received a report of two men carrying a bow and arrow while walking along a track by the reservoir on the Military Road in the Harlow Hill area,” the force said. “Officers attended and subsequently stopped a vehicle in the Darras Hall area and seized bows and arrows.”

What began as an afternoon walk in the countryside ended with armed officers at the gates of one of the North East’s most exclusive postcodes. For Newcastle, though, the matter currently sits in the “misjudgment rather than misconduct” category.

With police satisfied there was no threat and no evidence of illegal hunting, the club is not expected to intervene. Dedic, signed to bring energy and aggression to Newcastle’s right flank, will now look to make headlines for his tackling and overlapping runs at Craven Cottage rather than for an off-field episode that briefly turned him into a target of a very different kind.