Sunday Herald, The: Corruption in sport is spiralling out of control Internet gambling is

PERSONALLY, I don't often bet on horse racing. As easy ways to lose money go, the sport of kings is the leader of the pack. I would happily lay money, though, on one equestrian tradition: every couple of years, without fail, a race-fixing scandal will erupt.

We are in the midst of one now. Last week another three men, including the trainer Alan Berry and the jockey Paul Bradley, got a visit from the plods. That brings the total number of arrests in this particular episode to 25. Yet will that cleanse racing of corruption once and for all?

You wouldn't get odds.

Professional sport depends on two mutually contradictory things: money and uncertainty. You need a lot of both for the industry to thrive properly. Michael Schumacher has made himself very rich as a Formula One driver, but he has made F1 tedious in the extreme by his habit of winning everything in sight.

Horse racing, equally, provides its biggest thrills when the long shot comes home. If the punters decide that the outsider has had a little assistance, however, they tend to grow sceptical about the entire business and stop throwing good money after bad.

It is one reason, on a different level, why the war on drugs in sport has to be ceaseless. If athletes choose to risk damaging their bodies that is, in my book, their business.

But if drugs, unchecked, become nothing more than a means for rigging a contest, this spectator's reaction is simple: why bother watching?

With football, you become inured to dodgy decisions. If you are partisan, as most of us are, you tend to see dark deeds even when none exist.

The nature of the game, its sheer complexity, is what makes it exciting (some of the time), but that is also what makes cheating hard to spot.

Was the refereeing above board, or are you just being paranoid because your team lost? Did the keeper really fluff that save, or did someone have a quiet word before the game?

Inthese matters, the advice of the mysterious Deep Throat in All the President's Men is generally reliable: follow the money. Last week, after Panionios (yes, I know: who? ) staged a miraculous comeback to beat Dinamo Tiblisi 5-2 in a near-meaningless Uefa Cup tie after trailing 0-1 at half-time, only a blind man could have failed to spot the money trail. Bookies, as most will be aware, are not blind.

It wasn't simply a case of big money being laid on a Greek team with no chance of proceeding to the next stage of the tournament. Across the world, but particularly through the Betfair betting exchange, people were wagering thousands on a precise sequence of events: Panionios down after 45 minutes yet somehow roaring back in the second half. Bundles were put on this so-called "double result" until the bookies spotted what was going on.

Itwas clearly a coup, but an astonishingly blatant one:

one individual walked into a branch of Coral in London's Chinatown, Pounds1000 in cash in hand, looking for 28-1 on the combination of half-time and full-time results. That only counts as a rational bet if you know what is about to happen.

Uefa are investigating, of course. They have no other choice, given what was an international operation to subvert their premier tournament. What remains astonishing, however, is the sheer audacity of the scam. In order to reach the required result, Panionios had to score two goals in the final two minutes.

That can happen in football, but who bets on it in any serious way?

The implications of the affair go far beyond injury (takes out onion) to the bookmaking business. Football has seen its corruption scandals before, but this is something else. In Portugal, indeed, they are even now arresting referees and questioning the chairman of Porto. But the precision of the PanioniosTiblisi "gamble" suggests a deep and wide conspiracy.

It takes two parties to fix a game. To get the sort of sequence of events achieved in Greece, requires, equally, more than just a crooked ref or a tainted keeper. Both sides, if not all concerned, must have known exactly what was going on. Panionios players were denying any wrongdoing last week, of course - it is not the sort of thing to which you happily confess - but Uefa cannot possibly settle for that.

In the run-up to the game, the odds offered on Betfair for Tiblisi leading at half-time were 36-1, more or less what you would have expected for a tie of this sort. Just before kickoff those odds were 5-1. The betting on Panionios actually winning, meanwhile, came in from 4-7 to 1-4. If either club can explain that without reference to super-natural intervention, it will be worth hearing.

There have been worries in the past about the activities of gamblers in the Far East and possible attempts to influence games. Last week's coup seems, if anything, to have been on a bigger scale. So was really it an isolated incident?

The betting exchanges are better regulated than they once were, but the internet has made gambling in general very hard to control. Betfair, it is said, is capable of tracking all bets made through it, but it has yet to sign a "memorandum of understanding" giving Uefa access to its records. The words "tip" and "iceberg" spring to mind.

The temptations for a club with no hope of advancement in a particular tournament are obvious. "Favours" exchanged between such sides have been witnessed before. Throw in wads of cash, however, and the outcome is obvious: football becomes meaningless.

Betfair alone took Pounds375,000 on the Panionios-Tiblisi result.

Other bookmakers also saw unprecedented activity for a minor and meaningless tie.

Huge amounts were at stake, and huge amounts tend to suggest powerful forces. Last week, someone was trying to nobble football itself.

We should not be relying on Uefa alone. Someone should be calling in Interpol.