cheats will never prosper.......... much!
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| The beautiful game. |
It was a must win for the Rovers and with a last minute strike from the striker who scores when he wants, Brian Graham, Rovers saw off Dumbarton to secure 3 points in a 3-2 victory.
PLEASE SUPPORT YOUR MATCHDAY PROGRAMME
Puntuality is not a trait you associate
with Spain. If the meeting time is 8 o'clock, then anything up to 9:30 is
acceptable. The further away from the city you get, the more flexible time
keeping becomes. Upon recent trip
to Mallorca I had to get from on side of the island to the other on public
transport. After triple checking all times and connections I had my bus routes
planned. All was running to time and plan until it came to getting back to the
capital Palma, and my flight home. I was in the holiday resort of Alcudia, well
in February it ain't a thriving holiday village, more a ghost town that has
less life than the Mary Celeste. After doing what needed doing I made my way to
get the bus back to civilisation. Now before getting off the bus I'd arrived
on, I made sure with the driver the return timetable and location of stop. I
arrived at the stop 15 mins before the time and waited. As I waited a few
cyclists went past in a pack, then another and another. A few brightly shirted
teams cycled past followed by their team car. This seemed the place to be to do
you winter training, in the hour I spent waiting for the bus I saw over fifty
pedal by. Even in the airport waiting for the flight back to the mainland I saw
a few keen cyclists check-in their precious bikes. These hardcore sports
enthusiasts were going on holiday to get that edge.
Whilst waiting on my delayed flight I
decided to treat myself to a paper to kill some time. After skipping past the
depressing, economy filled news pages I got to the sport. Of course there was
the plenty about Barca and Madrid but there was also plenty about the scandals
in sport. Drugs being rife in Australian sport and being investigated by those
at the top . Cycling and certain cyclists being questioned on what feels like a
daily basis for the levels of doping in the sport. Football is again having to
weather the storm of match fixing. Some of the sports pages read like scripts
from a hardcore undercover American police series. Has professional sport always
been this scandalous?
European based investigators and the police
have been looking at over 680 matches, 380 in europe, in 30 countries in the
hunt for evidence and information on
match fixing and their connections to organized crime. The facts and
figures from this investigation are some scary reading. Some 425 match
officials, club officials, players and criminals are suspected of being
involved.
In Germany-based matches alone, criminals wagered £13.8m (16m
euros) on rigged matches and made £6.9m in profits. One payment to an
individual,in Austria, was for a total of £121,000. Phew these are not small
numbers. This things is huge.
"Cheats will never be stopped"
said Sepp Blatter, FIFA President. At a
recent press conference Mr Blatter fully admitted that it was difficult
to combat these complex crime organizations, many based in Asia. "Early warning" systems are
in effective at curbing the problems and the lack of ability to prosecute in
certain countries were making it even harder to clean up football.
FIFA has launched a web page to enable
individuals to make anonymous reports of corruption by officials and to report
attempts of match-fixing. But due to lack of legislation in some countries and
use of computers it is very hard to catch those involved, never mind stop it.
The amount of money gambled on sport every week runs into billions - "it's
to good to be missed for organised crime", particularly in south-east
Asia, where it is very under-regulated.
Most of us have all had a wee "flutter",
be it on the football, the Grand National or a guess at how many sweeties in a
jar and we do not feel the need to cheat. Hopefully we can keep the wee flutter
and not have it turn into a massive scandal.
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