The fixers: sport's hall of shame

By CHRIS DANIELS

Everyone has a price, and when the stakes are high enough the ethics and morals of sports stars can fly out the window as fast as the ordinary punter's.

The fall from grace of South African cricket captain Hansie Cronje brings back memories of sport's seamier side, where determination and character often come second to cash and glory.

Sporting fixes and rigged matches can be so scandalous and outrageous that they are dissected and analysed for generations.

Perhaps the most infamous fix took place when eight members of the 1919 Chicago White Sox baseball team were banned from the game for life for conspiring to throw the World Series against the Cincinnati Reds. With the prospect of an $US80,000 payout from a betting syndicate, the White Sox lost the best-of-nine series 5-3.

Movies and books about this darkest hour in American sport abound, most concentrating on the role of "Shoeless" Joe Jackson. Many historians and fans say he was unfairly banned and point to his good record during the series as proof that he was not in on the fix.

Campaigners are still fighting for his induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

When a team are involved, the story of a fix hits the headlines quickly, but with just two men in the ring where only one is needed to "take a dive" it is harder to get to the truth.

Professional boxing now enjoys a reputation similar to that of professional wrestling. And even Muhammad Ali, the greatest champion of them all, began his career as world heavyweight champion amid the howls of fans claiming a setup.

Fighting as Cassius Clay, he was the firm underdog when he met Sonny Liston for the heavyweight championship in 1964. Clay won when Liston failed to come out for the 8th round, claiming a shoulder injury.

At a rematch the next year, Liston was knocked out in the first round by a "phantom punch" that few observers saw, and his reputation never recovered.

But when the stakes are high, the greedy and unscrupulous will always be there to try their luck. One of the most infamous sporting scandals in the high-stakes world of Australian horse racing took place in 1984 in Queensland.

The horse Bold Personality ran for the poorly performing Fine Cotton. White stockings were painted on the ring-in and stewards soon spotted the hoax - Bold Personality was a bay and Fine Cotton was brown.

Trainer Hayden Haitana, formerly of Cambridge, served six months in an Australian jail for his part in the affair.

Those trying to fix the race were rumoured to have stood to win up to $1 million. They apparently got their idea for running a top-level horse in the place of a nag destined for the knacker's yard from a similarly audacious, though equally doomed, ring-in on May 12, 1972.

Vittorio David Renzella ran the crack sprinter Regal Vista in place of the "bumble-footed" Royal School at a country meeting in Victoria. Under Australian betting rules at the time, Renzella was able to keep the $33,570 he won, but was sentenced to two years' jail.

One journalist referred to Royal School as having "a worse track record than the electoral performance of the Australian Communist Party."

The New Zealand TAB says our totalisator system and the small size of the betting pool make it impossible to rip the system off with a big plunge on a rigged race; a huge bet would change the odds, and the cheats would be cheating themselves.

Team sports are harder to rig - after all, you need more people in on the scheme to ensure success. But sometimes the way a tournament is organised can lead to a situation where the rewards of rigging a match are simply too good to ignore.

In the 1978 World Cup soccer finals, Argentina and Brazil were at the top of their group. Argentina needed to beat a good Peruvian team by at least 4-0 to proceed through to the next round. To the amazement of many, they beat Peru 6-0, knocking out Brazil and going on to beat Holland in the final, 3-1.

The next World Cup in Spain was no better, with another example of the rules encouraging dubious play.

Members of the Austrian team knew that a 1-0 loss to West Germany would result in both teams going through to the next round, knocking out Algeria. The Germans scored part way through the first half, then for the rest of the match the two teams passed the ball among themselves, making little effort to score.

Fans were outraged, but it was totally within the rules, and no disciplinary action was ever taken. The final matches in each World Cup pool are now played at the same time, removing the temptation to fix results.

The ethical standards of the Australian cricket team were questioned last year at the World Cup in England. In what was labelled a "cynical act" and a "perversion of the game," the Australians went on a go-slow to narrow their winning margin against the West Indies.

At one stage scoring just five runs from 48 balls, the Australians wanted to make it as tough as possible for New Zealand to qualify, as they had taken early points through to the next round.

NZ team members said they would have done exactly the same thing had they been in a similar position.

"I don't know about 'moral'," said Australian captain Steve Waugh after the game, "but it's in the rules."