A FORMER Newcastle United coach told a court yesterday that he was forced to make apparent child abuse confessions because he was being held at knifepoint.

George Ormond, who faces sex allegations involving seven males, appeared to apologise to a man who confronted him about his ordeal after almost 20 years.

Mr Ormond, 46, who coached Newcastle United's youth team between 1993 and 1998, had not realised that his conversation with the man was being secretly taped.

But he told Newcastle Crown Court yesterday he just "played along" with the conversation after the man produced a knife.

Mr Ormond told the court how the man turned up at his house early on a Sunday morning in December 2000.

He told the jury: "He seemed a little bit nervous - a bit shaky. I got the impression he had been drinking or was under the influence of drugs.

"He did not seem very steady, the way he was speaking.

"He was fiddling inside his left breast jacket pocket with his right hand and he started a conversation about what had happened years ago, or whatever.

"As the conversation went on he was trying to make me admit things that just had not happened.

"At a later stage, I realised he had produced a knife from down his left sleeve."

Mr Ormond, of Newcastle, was cleared of two charges of indecent assault on the direction of Judge Esmond Faulks yesterday, and a further charge was reduced to attempted indecent assault.

He still denies 12 charges of indecent assault relating to seven alleged victims.

The trial continues.