A public school PE teacher who was part of a professional gang caught with almost £28,000 worth of cocaine has been jailed for four-and- a-half years.

Semi-professional footballer Lee Newman, 25, taught pupils at £24,600- a-year Ardingly College near Haywards Heath.

Lewes Crown Court was told how he and three housemates peddled the class A drug to lower-level drug dealers from their home in Thornhill Avenue in Brighton in a bid to make “easy money”.

Police raided the property andseized £950 in cash from Newman’s wardrobe and from under his pillow.

He told officers a dealer’s list in his notebook, also found in his wardrobe, related to him selling the sex drug Viagra to his friends.

Newman, who played as a striker for Conference League side Lewes, said that he had “too much to lose” with his jobs to get involved in drug-dealing.

Newman and estate agents Matthew Lambor, 26 and Jay Ball, 25, and legal secretary Nickie Leigh- Dixon, 26, all denied conspiracy to supply class A drugs.

But they were convicted by a jury at the end of a 10-day trial.

Prosecutor Richard Barton said: “This case concerns how a group of four young friends in their 20s, ostensibly law-abiding middle-class professionals, used the house they lived in as a base for supplying class A drugs to a range of lower-level drug dealers and users.

“It is accepted by the Crown that Lambor was the main dealer and he was the beneficiary of the greatest profit from it.

“The others played roles as lesser distributors from him, each arranging deals with their own customers.

“The effect was that the house was a significant source of cocaine to both users and lower-level suppliers in the Brighton area.” Jailing Newman, Judge Anthony Scott-Gall told him: “You were a highly-respected PE teacher and a man boys looked up to.

“You were a semi-professional footballer but you have thrown that away. What a waste.”

Barbara Down, defending said: “Clearly he is going to find it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to resume the career he had.”

Judge Scott-Gall jailed Lambor for six years, Ball for four-and-a-half and Dixon for three.

He told them: “You are all intelligent and ostensibly decent law-abiding middle class professionals. My goodness, you have thrown lives away.

“It’s a tragedy and gives me no pleasure to impose a sentence of imprisonment which I must, doing my duty to the public.

“I must send a deterrent signal to intelligent professionally-minded people who allow themselves to become tempted by easy money.”

A confiscation hearing will be held later to determine the exact benefit of their crime.