I guess it's never surprising when you hear stories like this anymore, but we're now looking at Australian Rugby for a match-fixing scandal, according to "Secure the Game" and Chris Celestino.Details of breaking NRL match fixing scandal. Claims of 6 players involved, each receiving 50,000 dollars. https://t.co/dsfKGEHhQu— Chris Celestino (@SecureGame) June 2, 2016
At least two 2015 matches of the National Rugby League are being investigated for possible match-fixing.
On a possibly-related note, Corey Norman of the Parramatta Eels has been warned by police for "consorting with criminals", as well as being rumored to have been in a casino late last week with the date-rape drug MDMA and other muscle relaxants.
Several other players (including Penrith's James Segeyaro and Parramatta's Junior Pablo) have been similarly warned after being seen in a photograph with an Australian gang boss.
No further action by the NRL has been made yet, but a league-wide warning to the players has been made. Under the law in New South Wales, you can be prosecuted for associating with such people, but only after you've been warned by the police not to do so.
That said, there is no current word that the three players listed (or just who the players are) are part of the match-fixing situation. One of the two matches involved Parramatta, but it was a match they won -- perhaps implying, if their players were involved, this was a "spot fix", where players would manipulate particular events in a match to influence betting, but still attempt to keep the final result of the match as clean as plausible.
The other match involved appears to involve that a brothel owner (with a criminal past) approached several players with $50,000 each to throw a game to ensure that the favored team covered the spread of 7 1/2 points.
This is about as bad timing as you can have for this kind of thing in Australian rugby. The first match of the classic "State of Origin" trilogy for the year (between players born in Queensland and those in New South Wales) had just been played a day or two before.
On another topic, I found this article:
ReplyDeleteThe Atlantic: The Case Against High School Sports
It looks like I found another example of Texas High School Football ***holery in the comments (the author is someone by the username of anarychyst):
Quote"Here is a story that proves that the glorification of team sports overrules true justice.
In Texas, football is looked upon as being next to God, country, mom and apple pie. Many Texas public high schools have sports facilities that rival college and professional facilities.
A number of years ago football "jocks" from an Amarillo Texas high school tormented and eventually murdered a “goth” kid. This youth was harassed without end (for being “different”), while school officials turned a blind eye to what was going on. These jocks (football heroes?) ended up murdering this youth by running him over with a car. The “goth” kid was from “the poor side of the tracks” while the jocks were all relatively wealthy (spoiled POSs).
When the case came to trial, the jocks were acquitted. You see, the “big football championship” was scheduled for the following week, and the jurors felt that their players would be needed on the field, rather than being incarcerated (where they really belonged).
The good side of this story is that the ringleader of the jocks was eventually prosecuted for other crimes, committed a few years after the murder.
So much for sports “teamwork” building values…"Quote