No bent games in Blighty? Don't bet on it.

People may view match-fixing as a foreign issue, but British football must not be ignorant of similar problems at home, writes Graeme Long.

What might have been: Tony Kay (second left) saw his one off flutter cost him his career.

The names of the players that day are ingrained in the mind of pretty much every football fan: Gordon Banks, Alan Ball, Nobby Stiles, Bobby Moore....Tony Kay? Don't worry if you don't recognise that last one, you won't be alone; what could have been a household name linked to English football's greatest hour is synonymous only with on of its saddest “what might have been” tales. 

Born and raised in Sheffield, boyhood Owls fan Kay made his debut for Wednesday aged 17, and by the 1958-59 campaign the skillful midfielder was an integral part of a side that won the Second Division and promotion to the top flight. A very respectable fifth-place finish was achieved the following season, before even better a year later: Kay was Wednesday's star man and an ever-present as only Spurs' famous double-winning side stopped them taking the title.

By now he was perhaps English football's hottest property, and in December 1962 an ambitious and big-spending Everton (honestly, ask your granddad) broke the British transfer record to take Kay to Merseyside. He started each of the 19 remaining games of that season and was an immediate success, brilliant in an Everton side that took the title for the first time in 24 years.

That summer newly-appointed England manager Alf Ramsey gave Kay his England debut, which he duly marked with a goal. So, 25 years old, cap on the mantlepiece next to your league winner's medal, the England manager wants to make you a key part of a squad gearing up for a World Cup on home soil. What could possibly go wrong?

Unfortunately for Kay, things were about to go very wrong indeed. In December 1962, just a couple of weeks before his move to Everton, Kay and two other young Wednesday players had bet £50 each on their team to be beaten by Ipswich. All three played in the game, and, as far as reports and their own testimony is to be believed, gave 100%. One of the saddest aspects of the tale is just how naïve they appear to have been: to this day, Kay maintains the bet was proposed to him as, effectively, an insurance policy against defeat as Wednesday "always lost at Portman Road”. 

"Punters can now bet on levels of football not available five years ago, featuring youth players or semi-pros who get paid little more than expenses"

In 1964 the story was passed to the Sunday People by Jimmy Gauld, the ex-pro who had approached the three men with the idea for placing the bet in the first place, and who had now decided that selling “England Star In Match Fix Shock” headlines to a newspaper was a better way to make money than gambling on football. Gauld even attempted to secretly record Kay talking about the bet in a poorly-executed( but far ahead of its time) 'sting', similar to that which the News of the World would still be using to catch out greedy, naïve sportsmen 50 years later. 

At the end of a lengthy investigation the three players were not only banned from all aspects of the game for life (unable even to attend matches as spectators or play at amateur level), but sentenced to four months in jail. As his former team-mates and friends danced around Wembley with the World Cup trophy in 1966, 28-year-old Kay was fresh out of prison, unemployed and completely ostracised from the game that had been his life since he left school.

The story of Tony Kay is an interesting one for many reasons, one of which being that, the rights and wrongs of the case and the punishment aside, it still seems shocking that a leading player in English football could be convicted of such a thing. Match-fixing is something most fans in this country have probably never really thought about, and for good reason: the British game is probably as clean as any in the world. In Italy, for example, aside from the major scandals of 1980 (which led to a two-year ban for future World Cup winner Paolo Rossi - wonder what Tony Kay made of that?) and 2006, incidents that would cause outcry in England are common practice. Put simply, if one team need a result in a game that matters little to their opponents, chances are they get it.

For example, the final day of the 2006/07 season and two fairly poor sides who need to win to stay up, Siena and Reggina, have home games against two sides who have already secured top 4 finishes, Lazio and AC Milan. Both relegation threatened sides start their matches at odds of 2/7 (for the non-betting folk, this is roughly what price Arsenal or Man United would be at home to, say, Stoke), and both win. One Italian journalist wrote that Siena were so inept in their attempts to convert the many chances they were presented with that the Lazio players “looked disgusted” with them. For those who find watching paint dry too exhilarating, I recommend watching the last 20 minutes of an end-of-season Serie B match in which a draw suits both teams.

France, of course, had the famous case which saw Marseille relegated and stripped of titles in the early 1990s. In Germany, referee Robert Hoyzer was jailed in 2005 after admitting fixing German Cup and lower-league games. Spanish side Hercules' promotion to La Liga last year is shrouded in suspicion amid allegations that they bought results in their promotion push: two rival teams officially complained, and the Spanish FA only dropped their investigation after a judge intervened to deny them access to supposedly incriminating taped conversations.

The point of this is not to denigrate 'Cheating Johnny Foreigner', but to highlight how important it is that we don't get complacent in Britain. Football fans in this country will bear shitty signings, poor performances, dodgy chairman, pretty much anything. But can you imagine finding out that 3-0 defeat that ruined your weekend a few months ago was bent? Where would that leave you as a paying spectator? I honestly cannot think of anything that would do more damage to the game than a proven incident or two of match-fixing, and we shouldn't presume that we are safe from it just because that sort of thing “doesn't happen” here.

It is perhaps hard to envisage at the top level of the game (if only because, well, how much would you have to pay someone on £3million a year to run the risk of pissing it up the wall?), but the FA and other authorities need to do everything they can to ensure it doesn't creep in lower down the pyramid. Punters can now bet on levels of football in a high-street bookie that were not available to them even five years ago, featuring youth players or semi-pros who get paid little more than expenses. 

There has already been a Blue Square North game this season that was subject to such suspicious betting patterns with a number of different betting firms (the bets being for a team to be winning at half-time but subsequently lose the game) that some have refused to pay out winning bets until the match is investigated. Of course there is also responsibility on the part of the bookmakers, and big strides are being made in this area: in recent years they have begun sharing information with each other and with governing bodies, which they have never done before. More than anything though, it is absolutely vital that the authorities don't bury their head in the sand over this, because the very last thing the game in this country needs is a 21^st Century Tony Kay.