‘Playing Dead’ and Killing Off Amateurism: Bribery Scandals,Illegal Player Payments,Rule Expunging,and the Victorian Football League’s Authorization of Professionalism in 1911

Abstract

Australian football is an indigenous game codified in 1859. In Melbourne, the code’s birthplace, the game remained officially committed to the amateur ideal for over a half-century. Illegal player payments nonetheless became increasingly commonplace. Moreover, periodically rumours swirled of champion footballers taking bribes to ‘play dead’. By the early 1900s, the code’s leading competition, the Victorian Football League (VFL), was derided with the ‘shamateurism’ label. Following a sensational match-fixing investigation that resulted in two players receiving five-year bans, in 1911 the VFL expunged its rule prohibiting player payments. Was the timing merely coincidental or was the League’s historic switch to professionalism a deliberate countermeasure to redirect press attention, renew public confidence, and restore the game’s integrity? By consulting the League’s official records and contemporary press articles, this work examines the overlooked yet discernible linkages between rising match-fixing allegations and the VFL’s decision to eschew amateurism and embrace professionalism. It argues that Australian football offers an instructive historical perspective of a sporting body tackling mounting concerns over corruption, taking back the ascendency by amending its rules to better govern over dishonest players and duplicitous club officials, thereby growing its popularity and restoring public perception of its integrity in the process.     

Match-Fixing: Working Towards an Ethical Framework

How does match-fixing, or other unfair manipulation of matches, that involves under-performance by players, or refereeing and umpiring that prevents fair competition, be thought of in ethical terms? In this article, I outline the different forms that match-fixing can take and seek to comprehend these disparate scenarios within Kantian, Hegelian and contractualist ethical frameworks. I tentatively suggest that, by developing an ethical opposition to match-fixing in sport, we can give much greater substance to popular phrases such as ‘respect for the game’, encompassing the value of sport itself and respect for other players, fans, sponsors and organisers. Arguing that match-fixing denies recognition to these ‘others’ demonstrates how fundamentally match-fixing ‘hollows out’ sport because a fixed match is of no worth: the whole value of the game has literally been evacuated.     

Match-Fixing in Polish Football: Historical Perspectives and Sociological Interpretations

Abstract

This paper addresses the massive scale of match-fixing in Polish football revealed by the corruption scandal which hit the headlines in the Polish media in 2005. Although more than a decade later the investigation is far from over, it is already clear that corruption was an everyday phenomenon ignored or purposely overlooked by bodies supervizing football competitions. The peculiarity of the Polish case stems from the fact that the match-fixing was not betting-related. The paper attempts to track the historical roots of corruption, paying particular attention to the period of communism (1945–1989) and the role of the Polish Football Association. Subsequently, several non-mutually exclusive sociological interpretations of the situation are discussed.     

‘The Whole of Poland Saw It,and You Gentlemen are Blind’: Match-Fixing in Polish Football – A Case Study from 1993

Abstract

This paper focuses on one of the most famous match-fixing cases in the history of Polish football – when in 1993 the Polish Football Association decided to subtract points due to match-fixing in the last match round of the season, an action which meant that Legia Warsaw were stripped of the Polish title. The paper initially presents a brief overview of the history of match-fixing in Polish football and then moves on to an informed narrative of the 1993 case. Two primary analytical focuses are adopted: first the 1993 case study is analyzed in the light of a typology established by criminologist Declan Hill explaining why corruptors decide to fix football matches. Second societal reactions to the 1993 scandal are analyzed. The paper questions to what extent reactions to the 1993 match-fixing scandal were affected by the profound social, political, and cultural transformations of the immediate post-communist period. To do so, the sociological concept of ‘cultural trauma’ is scrutinized in the context of football match-fixing. It is argued that the 1993 scandal was a ‘trigger’ which allowed cultural trauma to emerge and that reactions to the scandal were heavily influenced by wider societal events.     

论“假球”对公共财产安全法益的侵害及其该当性

"假球"对社会的最大危害,不在于行为人收受了多少贿赂、是否参与了赌球;而在于打假球的行为严重侵害了他人的财产利益、国家形象和社会文化。因此,在评价假球时,不能只关注行为人获取财物的行为是否构成犯罪,而应更多的关注他们打假球的行为对公共财产安全法益的危害和对国家、社会利益的侵犯,及其该当性。对打假球的行为,由于观众买票在前、行为人做球在后,一般不符合诈骗罪的特征,不宜定诈骗罪;但是,它具备"以危险方法危害公共安全罪"的该当性。     

The Perils of Blowing the Whistle: Match-Fixing in Scotland and Australia, 1920s to 2015

Abstract

Two family stories shed some light on changes in the character and causes of corruption in football in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. My grandfather was a central figure in an alleged match-fixing episode in Association football in Scotland in the third decade of the twentieth century, while I was a peripheral figure in one in Australia in the last. I came across another one while researching the story of the Croatian soccer clubs in Victoria in the post-Second World War years. I also observed very closely an attempt to fix a series of matches by introducing a number of players into a team on behalf of overseas betting interests in the twenty-first century. Reflecting on these cases is a way of trying to understand how the forms and the drivers of match-fixing have changed in the twenty-first century. The three earlier episodes seem very old fashioned in the context of globalization, the commodification of sport, international gambling syndicates, and systematic corruption at the heart of the world game.     

论欧足联体育处罚权的适用与界限——以土耳其操纵比赛案为视角

欧足联（UEFA）有权对操纵国内足球比赛的俱乐部及其成员实施行政处罚与纪律处罚。UEFA行政处罚决定，能够被国家足协先前作出的、已经生效的，并且能够起到相同制裁效果的裁决所替代；UEFA在国家足协已经实施纪律处罚的前提下，再次实施纪律处罚的行为并不违反一事不再罚原则。再者，UEFA行使处罚权时采纳的严格责任原则是对刑法自我答责原则的补充；刑事法院的判决可以确证UEFA的裁决；刑事法院予以排除的证据仍然可以被UEFA采信。     

论足坛"假赌黑"现象的刑法适用

针对目前中国足球出现的假球、赌球、黑哨等现象,对体育领域内假球、睹球行为的成因、危害性,我国现行法律法规对其规制进行了分析,对假球、赌球行为的刑法适用,司法介入的途径等问题进行了探讨,提出了相关立法和司法建议.