A TEENAGER who was jailed for stabbing a footballer has been sentenced for brandishing a machete in a nightclub on Christmas Eve after being released on licence.

Joshua Baldwin, from Crawley, was sentenced to three and a half years in prison for stabbing an Alliance Football Club player in Langley Green in October 2015.

After the 19-year-old was released on licence last December, he went to Déjà Vu nightclub in Crawley High Street in the early hours of Christmas Eve, where he was seen by a steward pulling a machete from his trousers.

At his sentencing for the latest offence, Ryan Richter, prosecuting, told Hove Crown Court: “He said there were some Mauritian males who were selling drugs to his sister and he had been given the machete to hold for them the day before.

“Baldwin said he had taken the item to the nightclub to return it.

“He said he jumped over the barrier as he wouldn’t have been able to go into the nightclub otherwise.

“A steward was monitoring the dance floor and saw him produce a machete from his trousers.

“He was taken outside and police arrested him.”

Baldwin pleaded guilty to possessing an article with a blade or point at the nightclub.

He was sentenced to 12 months in prison on Friday.

He had been returned to prison after the licence breach to continue his original sentence.

He is not expected to be released until June next year.

During his sentencing, Judge David Rennie said: “This could have gone catastrophically wrong – luckily it didn’t.

“The sentence reflects your previous convictions for violence and for you taking it [the machete] into the club.”

Baldwin has previous convictions for robberies, assaults and GBH with an offensive weapon, for which he was jailed in 2016, which happened in woodland behind Langley Green Football Club.

After a match at the football club, a group of players returned to the changing rooms to find their lockers had been broken into and personal items including phones were stolen.

The players found a bag with most of the stolen items inside in the woodland behind the football pitches, where a group of youths were standing.

The footballers confronted the group and Baldwin reacted by stabbing one of the players, a 26-year-old man, in the neck.

Although the victim was injured during the attack, he later made a recovery.

Baldwin pleaded guilty to the offence in April 2016, before being sent to jail.