Jellis given suspended five-month betting ban

After leaving Stevenage in 2020, Jellis spent four years in non-league before getting another chance in the English Football League with Walsall

Walsall midfielder Jamie Jellis has been handed a suspended five-month ban and fined £1,200 for breaching Football Association rules on betting.

The 24-year-old placed a total of 2,248 bets on matches between April 2019 and July 2023, all before he joined the Saddlers from non-league Tamworth in January last year.

Jellis, whose ban from "all football and football-related activity" has been suspended for 12 months, admitted the charges at an independent regulatory commission hearing on Friday.

His ban will only come into place if he breaches FA betting rules within the next year.

In a short statement, Walsall thanked the Professional Football Association "for their support of Jamie and the club during this process".

It was alleged Jellis placed his bets over the course of five seasons, when he was aged 18 to 22, with 198 of them on matches involving the team he was playing for at the time.

Of those 198 bets, 16 were place on his own club.

In the independent regulatory commission's written reasons for the decision, it was stated the hearing accepted the bets were "substantial although not prolific" and that Jellis was "young and inexperienced, with a lack of awareness and comprehensive understanding of The FA betting rules at the time that the bets were placed".

Jellis, whose bets totalled a net loss of £2,856, said in a written statement "that mates who played local football were all putting ACCAs [accumulators] on as part of their Saturday routine and when I turned 18, I started doing the same".

He added there was "nothing at any of the clubs I played at on loan from Stevenage to indicate that I was not permitted to bet on football".

Jellis said when he did it "it was not in my mind that I could be getting involved in the professional game again" before he apologised and said he took "full responsibility for my actions".

Jellis has played seven times for Walsall this season, with the last of his six appearances in League Two on 30 August against MK Dons.