02Jun

Words Don’t Stop Bullets: Why Cricket Canada Needs Police Action

Violent extortion, threats, houses sprayed with bullets and alleged match-fixing at the World Cup of Cricket linked to sports gambling. Words don’t stop bullets. Bits of paper don’t stop gangsters from killing people. What Canadian cricket is facing is not a “sports crime”. It is not doping or cheating but an alleged, systemic campaign of criminal extortion committed by violent thugs. In April of this year, the journalists at my former Canadian television program the fifth estate (akin to 60 Minutes or Panorama in...

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14Jun

Why the Match Fixers are at the World Cup in Russia

The hot tub of World Cup match-fixing This article first appeared on playthegame.org Potential corruption and match-fixing at the World Cup is aided by corrupt national football association officials, . FIFA’s ‘often odd’ attitude towards these officials protects the fixers at the World Cup. Uncle Frankie, the match-fixer, sat in the hot tub with players from the Swedish World Cup team. It was in a Los Angeles Hotel before their third-place match with Bulgaria at the 1994 World Cup. Uncle...

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26Oct

Kurds = Scottish Highlanders without their restraint

If you blinked, you would have missed it. For less than three weeks, it looked as if the Kurds might have their own independent country. The Kurds control a mountainous area in northern Iraq and since the British occupation in 1920 they have been pushing for their own independent country. Last month, the Kurds held a referendum in which those who turned out voted 92 per cent in favour of independence. Cue cheers and celebrations in the Kurdish Highlands of Iraq. It...

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13Dec

Canada’s Shame

The success of Toronto FC aside, Canadian soccer remains an abject embarrassment — not because of quality of play, but because European police and sports officials say a lower-level Canadian league remains a hot spot of corruption and match-fixing. “You are supposed to be honest people,” Kee, a Chinese-Malaysian bookie who runs an illegal gambling site in Kuala Lumpur, said last year. “How can you be honest when so many fixed soccer games are going on in your country?” These accusations...

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02May

They Have Already Failed: IOC and Interpol

Three weeks away and much to discuss. Lets begin with the non-action of the Olympic integrity officials. They have already failed. In case you missed it amidst the barrage of fancy sounding “anti-corruption” conferences and announcements from various bureaucrats about how they are fighting hard against fixing, leaving no stone turned, standing vigilant, etc, etc [fill in your favourite cliché here] you may have missed the po-faced declaration from Interpol and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) about their joint campaign to...

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01Jun

Loud Booing, Bridge of Lies & South African Fix

What to do if you're a Canadian soccer fan. It is very simple. Cheer the players: Boo the soccer officials. Anytime a FIFA official walks on the pitch or addresses the crowd: boo and jeer them. For good measure, make signs that denounce them. At these international events, FIFA officials’ usual trick is to make sure they are only seen on the pitches accompanied by fashion models or small children in costumes. Ignore the models, respect the children, but jeer the FIFA officials. Remember, this is...

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11Aug

Canada’s Excellence at Sports – not!

For the last two weeks we have had to endure a wave of noise about Canadian athletes drive for excellence.   The usual clichés have been spouted about our country "punching above our weight".   We have even had the unseemly sight of an executive for a PR company telling us that all this good feeling around the Olympics was the result of the Stephen Harper government. The problem is that it is not true. It is not true that the...

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