No, Musket, you presume he has a right to appeal on the same terms and presumptions he was sentenced under. That is not the case.

Firstly, he's been found guilty, so guilty he fundamentally is.

Secondly, he's requested the right to make an appeal, which is not the same as making the appeal. He does not have an automatic right to do so, but has to ask the Court whether the legal foundation he is appealing on indicates sufficient weakness in his conviction to justify the appeal. That can be refused, if the Court feels he has insufficient case: simply saying "I was a famous footballer" is insufficient, the Court replies "Once you were a little boy and are no more. Then you were a famous footballer and are no more. Then you were a rapist and thereby became a criminal, and a criminal you are, and will remain beyond the term you serve, beyond your probationary period, in fact until your record is purged in due time. What you become next is limited by those facts: for example, the military won't take you and you'll never pass a DBS check." He has to show there is sufficient uncertainty in Law as to make a review reasonable, and to be fair, the case is not completely clearcut: the question will be, most probably, whether it was sufficiently so as to make the decision unsafe. Other grounds for appeal may exist.

One argument that this may not exist is that his request for appeal is not being treated with alacrity. The Law hates being wrong, and will normally bustle to correct matters as far as possible, or at least stop it getting any worse, when it suspects it might have screwed up. That his request to appeal is still not granted two and a half years after he was sentenced, long after the period within which he had to lodge the grounds, argues that they may be specious.

Only conditionally on his being authorised to appeal, predicated on his ability to demonstrate the possibility of an error in law in his conviction, which can include new evidence and its indirect implication, but not direct evidence in the record on which he was tried, can he appeal. His appeal hearing will then be predicated on the onus on him to prove his innocence: whereas in his first case he was able to benefit from a presumption of innocence, now the Court starts from a presumption of guilt and he has to prove his innocence. That change of balance can be significant.

The Law on the consequences of a sexual offense are rather broadbrush, intentionally so as to sweep up the scenarios where the lack of morality which opened the door to one offence might open the door to others: if someone's unreliable in one thing, how cananyone say he'll be reliable in another? And therefore, the usual career path to someone leaving professional football, teaching and coaching, is likely to be barred to him.

Now, it could be he has an ace up his sleeve proving his innocence, and once and above all if proved, he must be treated as innocent. But that is at this point hypothetical, and the reality dominant, that he is guilty and we must treat him as such. Even if he proves his innocence, he has no recourse against anyone who treats him as a criminal between his conviction and his successful appeal, or the end of his sentence and purging of his criminal record, as appropriate, whichever comes first.