If our game is tainted, then the game is up

If our game is tainted, then the game is up
By Des Kelly

There are fundamental questions we should all be asking ourselves on a compelling weekend for sport: Can we believe what we are seeing? And is it honest and is it fair?

While your eyes have been on the European Championship qualifiers and the Rugby World Cup, someone, somewhere, it seems, may have been match fixing, bung taking, blood doping, race fixing, double dealing, blood faking, double faulting, referee bribing or simply not trying.

The signs are we are close to a tipping point; the moment when sport is so clouded by suspicion and compromise that the game is in danger of being well and truly up.

This week, Wayne Rooney’s father and uncle were among nine men arrested by Merseyside Police investigating an alleged betting scam in Scottish football, while in London three Pakistani cricketers were embroiled in a corruption trial.

Sport is supposed to be an escape from real life. But these days there are so many tales of greed, drug busts, sex scandals, vicious brawls, court battles and outright cheating it is enough to make you want to turn to the front page.

The football betting allegations centre on Motherwell’s Steve Jennings, a former Tranmere Rovers footballer, and his relationship with the Rooney family and friends after a number of suspicious bets were placed on Motherwell having a man sent off against Hearts

Seven minutes before the final whistle, Merseyside-born Jennings earned himself a red card by manhandling the referee. A number of people who allegedly benefited from this occurrence at extremely generous odds of 10-1 also happened to live in the Liverpool region, including the Rooneys.
Rooney Snr and the others arrested have vowed to clear their names. We await the next development.

Although no allegations of any wrongdoing have been made against Wayne Rooney, it did not escape the investigators’ attention that Jennings was once in the same Everton youth set-up as Rooney.

As this took place, a trial involving match-fixing claims levelled at three Pakistani cricketers was under way at Southwark Crown Court. Pakistan’s former captain Salman Butt and bowlers Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Aamer face allegations of a plot to deliver a precise number of no balls in one over against England at Lord’s last year.

They claim they are innocent, but are alleged to have agreed to the scheme in return for £140,000 each in cash from undercover reporters pretending to set up a sting on bookmakers.

Even if the individuals in these incidents are not found guilty, the number of such cases suggests they may be the tip of a large and very dirty iceberg of sporting corruption that extends further than most of us dare imagine. There are recurring themes in both stories — the potential exchange of inside information, allegations of a conspiracy to distort a specific part of a contest and the chance to make money from the vast array of eccentric, or ‘novelty’ spot bets on the global markets.

As a rule, gambling on a straight win, loss or draw has more than enough potential for exploitation. But throw in the minutiae of the number of red cards, no balls, corners and the like and the possibilities for making illicit money are endless. They are very difficult to trace, too, if the participants are sophisticated enough to cover their tracks.

It is tempting to assume gambling and football collide only when fans risk ordering a half-time pie. But too many ex-pros tell anecdotes of moneymaking scams to dismiss the idea something bigger is happening.

Matthew Le Tissier revealed he tried to orchestrate a £10,000 bet on the time of the first throw in and failed.

I was previously on a newspaper that discovered ‘irregular betting patterns’ when West Ham’s Paul Kitson succeeded in hoofing the ball out just two seconds into a game at Old Trafford.

Betting offices reported unusual interest in the first throw and, when a United player returned the ball to play after just seven seconds, the spot bet would have paid 63 times any stake to those involved.

And that is the relatively small time stuff. Interpol currently suspect more than 300 matches have been ‘fixed’ across the international arena, including games in Finland, the Middle East and beyond. Spectacular examples include one tournament in Turkey, where friendlies between Bolivia and Latvia and Estonia and Bulgaria were settled by penalties after huge surges on that outcome in Far East betting markets. The match officials in charge have already been banned for life.

For sport to flourish and survive, it requires our belief. The moment we assume it is routinely distorted by criminality and racketeering is surely when we cease to bother.

If a cricket team are bowled out for a ridiculously low score today, everyone now automatically raises an eyebrow thanks to Hansie Cronje, Pakistani cricket and others. Each double fault and injury withdrawal in tennis or missed pot in snooker is questioned, because of past cases and allegations.

Remember, too, the Formula One world championship is likely to be decided tomorrow, although it isn’t that long since a team were instructing their driver to deliberately crash into a wall and not only change the course of a race but the entire Grand Prix season.

And, while we are gripped by the battle to reach the last four of the Rugby World Cup, we still recall the fake blood episode of 2009 and the crafty ploy to swap the ball that England were caught using during this tournament.

Sport will never rid itself of dishonesty. But the simple way to stop a lot of the gambling skulduggery would be to outlaw all the ‘novelty’ bets. They are too easy to manipulate.

Why hasn’t it been done? International Cricket Council corruption investigator Ravi Sawani told Southwark Crown Court the scale of the rewards.

During a one-day game between India and Pakistan, £650million would be bet in the city of Mumbai alone. Across the Indian sub-continent, this equates to £40billion a year. As ever, it is more lucrative to let the fiddling continue than to stop it.

Even so, I’d still like to bet that, when faced with a choice between right and wrong, people would do the right thing. Luckily, I’m not a gambling man.

Merritt ruling is a victory for impotenceThe American athlete LaShawn Merritt has overturned a drugs ban originally imposed on him for using a ‘male enhancement product’.

In the process — and I’m afraid there is no tasteful way of putting this — he effectively shafted the entire Olympic movement.

A ruling by the Court of Arbitration for Sport now allows drug cheats previously excluded from the 2012 Games to pass through the ‘Nothing To Declare’ Customs channel without challenge.

Before Merritt won his case, athletes given a ban of six months or more for doping offences were excluded from the subsequent Games.

Now more than a hundred competitors will be allowed into London, from German speed skating blood dopers, to Brazilian cyclists caught taking amphetamines.

Merritt, the man at the centre of this, blamed his positive steroid result on a spurious potion claiming to temporarily boost penis size containing ‘horny goat weed’ — what else?

The admission he was having problems in the trouser department seemed less embarrassing than being considered an outright drug cheat.

He genuinely said in his official statement: ‘To know that I’ve tested positive as a result of a product that I used for personal reasons is extremely difficult to wrap my hands around’.
Not a self-aware individual, then. People change; individuals make mistakes and review their life. Ask me a question now and the chances are I’d give you a different answer to one I gave six weeks ago.
So redemption should always be a possibility in sport as in life. But not like this. Athletics is on a downward spiral following the judgement. There has to be some meaningful deterrent to failing a drug test and an Olympic exclusion order established that principle.

Only the British Olympic Association refuses to take a softer line, sticking to their life ban.

There are those who suffer, such as Dwain Chambers, but he is not the victim here. It is the entire sport that needs protecting and at least the BOA have made a stand.