and you thought match-fixing was about big bucks...

You would be wrong. There are all sorts of reasons why players would agree to throw a match, or part of a match. If you go back to the famous 1919 Chicago Blacksox baseball scandal, the players involved agreed to throw the World Series against the Cincinnati Reds because they felt they were grossly underpaid by the team owner. The opportunity was there, and in came the underworld connection who liked a bet.

The name Wilson Raj Perumal is infamous in match-fixing circles and if you google search him, you'll find people blaming his ego for getting caught. He borrowed money from people to start fixing matches, didn't pay them all back despite having a lavish lifestyle and posting photos on Facebook of him travelling the world... people he owed money to naturally started getting a bit pissed off.

In this article, you'll read a story of how one low-level cup match in Malaysia was thrown for as little as RM200 (£42) each to six players, from an accomplice of Raj Perumal. The cost of living in Malaysia is low, but it's not that low. It's more than just money - it's a cultural thing too. Different cultures don't have the same rule of law system that we do in the supposedly superior western world. Corruption is a part of life in most parts of the world. You only have to look at FIFA and how bent they are to see that.

So why should players have any higher moral standards than Sepp Blatter or Jack Warner???

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Spot-fixing - you will never, ever be able to stop it

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lay the field - my favourite racing strategy

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Sport is made for betting

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