FA criticised for relaxation of gambling rules

Sir John Smith, the man who led the biggest-ever investigation into gambling within professional football, said yesterday that the Football Association was wrong to have watered down its regulations on gambling to allow players, managers and others involved in the game to place wagers on matches.

Sir John Smith, the man who led the biggest-ever investigation into gambling within professional football, said yesterday that the Football Association was wrong to have watered down its regulations on gambling to allow players, managers and others involved in the game to place wagers on matches.

It emerged yesterday that the FA had made the changes, unannounced, earlier this year. Until the summer, it had always been forbidden for anyone involved in the game to bet on any match, apart from via the licensed pools. Yesterday the FA said that betting is now not forbidden "if the bets are on a match or competition in which the participant [gambler] is not taking part or has no influence, either direct or indirect".

The new rules forbid providing insider information, but do not expressly prohibit receiving insider information. The wording does not, for example, forbid player or manager X in the First Division talking to player or manager Y in the Premiership and then having a bet using any information unwittingly provided.

"The potential problem is that there are people in any business who are in a position to engage in 'insider dealing'," said Sir John, the former Metropolitan Police Deputy Commissioner, who compiled the 1997 report into betting in the wake of the "bungs" affair and recommended ways to stamp it out.

"We ban insider dealing in business and football should be no different," Sir John said. "A lot of people in football have the ability to get information that people outside do not. It would be far better if the ban on betting on football by those in the game was complete."

In the conclusion of his report, Sir John expressly advised against any relaxation in the FA's regulations on gambling.

An FA spokesman said that the rule changes did not amount to a relaxation, "just a better clarification", and added that any player found to have broken the new rules could be fined or even banned. The spokesman admitted, however, that the new rules are no more workable than the old ones. "They still rely on good faith," he said.

Good faith did not stop large numbers of players breaking the old regulations, as an Independent survey of players earlier this year showed. A third of the 600 professionals in England who took part in the survey admitted to betting on football last season, including 13 per cent of Premiership players who admitted to betting on their own teams. The FA spokesman said yesterday that those findings "were something that were taken seriously". However, the relaxation of the rules in the current climate suggests otherwise.

The debate about gambling within football continues to rage, not least given the card schools that allegedly caused rifts within Kevin Keegan's England camp. Betting in sport also continues to come under intense scrutiny because of cricket's match-fixing débâcle. Perhaps most damningly the FA's rule changes suggest, despite stringent denials from the governing body, that it has given up its hard-line policy because it was difficult to enforce.

"When I was compiling my report gambling was endemic in football," Sir John said yesterday. "Some players were amazed they shouldn't bet because they didn't know the rules. Some people might argue that the changes are pragmatic but I can't agree. If there is even a perception that people are betting for the wrong reasons, that's not good. The best way to prevent that is no betting at all. The FA told me that their main concern was the integrity of the game. You shouldn't do anything that risks damaging that."