Doesn't Anyone Play by the Rules?

Sunday, Jul. 09, 2006 By D.J. TAYLOR

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George Orwell famously described the international sporting fixtures of the mid-1940s as "war minus the shooting." Looking at the newspaper back pages six decades later, his ghost would probably diagnose not an exercise in disguised nationalism but a series of deceptions practiced on a credulous public. Never, it seems, has the annual summer sports extravaganza been so inflamed by scandal. An inquiry into match fixing in the Italian Serie A soccer league looks set to bring the enforced relegation of four leading clubs.

A few hundred kilometers to the north, several much-fancied entrants in this year's Tour de France find themselves kicking their heels on the roadside after a doping row. Meanwhile the sport of kings — the polite name for British horse [an error occurred while processing this directive] racing — has been cast into turmoil by an alleged betting fraud and the arrest of Kieren Fallon, one of its most accomplished jockeys.

And to what prosecutors and investigating committees maintain is systemic corruption can be added an outsize helping of low-level deceit that tends to be marked down as "gamesmanship." One British newspaper was so amused by the underhanded dealings on display in the World Cup that it produced a series of league tables under such headings as diving, feigning injury, intimidating the referee and tantrums. One of the most abiding images of the tournament, along with the brilliant displays of the veteran French player Zinédine Zidane, was the sight of his teammate Thierry Henry flinging himself to the turf in response to a prod in the back and for some reason clutching the part of himself least affected — his head.

A certain kind of pundit turns horribly blasé in the face of these deceits. Sports, the argument — or rather, the extenuation — runs, are an international business, in which victory guarantees extraordinary financial rewards. It would be surprising if the Italian, or any of the major soccer leagues, weren't more or less corrupt, given the huge revenues they generate and the conduits they provide into lucrative European competitions. All one can do is to try and mitigate some of the more obvious excesses.

Down at the bedrock level of the bogus injury and the attempt to get one's opponent sent off, a yet more eyes-wide-open cynicism occasionally prevails. Of course players dived for penalties, the former England international footballer Ian Wright said recently. "So why don't we? It will happen to us again, so we should."

Happily, this kind of attitude has a corrective. It can sometimes be found in sportsmen themselves, but is more reliably expressed by the people who watch sports or report and analyze them for public consumption. Significantly, when Henry performed his theatrical tumble in the World Cup second-round match against Spain, British TV commentators were outraged. Were France to score from the resultant free kick, one of them deposed, it would be a tainted goal. In much the same way, a Press Association report on the semifinal between France and a Portuguese team accused of unfair tactics voted the French worthy winners on "moral terms." In the same game, the Portuguese player Cristiano Ronaldo, who was thought to have contributed to English striker Wayne Rooney's quarterfinal sending off, walked onto the pitch to a chorus of jeers.

The air of moral seriousness that still underpins 21st century sports shouldn't surprise anybody with an eye for historical continuity. The administrative codes by which most mass-spectator sports are governed were generally assembled in the late 19th century. Consequently they come drenched in what used to be called Corinthian values: gentlemanly ideals of fair play, sportsmanship and the desirability of not kicking a man when he is down. The wonder of modern professional sports, with their teenage soccer millionaires, mass migrations to overseas tournaments and stud fees running into six figures, is not that cheating should dominate the headlines but that so many elements of the bygone amateur ethic should survive.

After all, if international football were entirely corrupt, a player sent off for charging down his opponent in sight of goal would be applauded off the pitch. That it isn't — quite — reduced to these depths is a mark of its enduring moral core and the complexity of the relationship between those who play the game and those who watch it. The former England manager Alf Ramsey notoriously refused to let his players exchange shirts with their Argentine opponents after the turbulent World Cup quarterfinal of 1966, describing the South Americans as "animals."

Ramsey, it might be said, did not merely want victory: he wanted his men to demonstrate that they were better people as well. Here and there around the international sporting arena, however disguised by graft, intrigue and cupidity, something of this elemental spirit precariously survives.