James Lawton: Forget the great moments, will 2007 be remembered as sport's year of anarchy?

If Ferrari had generated any more moral indignation, they would surely have had to lease the Papal balcony. Then the world of sport would have risked another serious bout of ridicule ... St Peter's Square filled with erstwhile fans holding their sides and blowing raspberries.

And then after the dark hilarity, what? Another reason to believe that, under the weight of greed and the compromise it spawns, big-time sport is reaching the dangerous point where it can no longer govern itself.

How else to react to the picture of Ferrari as the guardians of fair play? The idea, surely, that the outfit that didn't even blink when the leader of their revival, Michael Schumacher, 10 years ago escaped any practical punishment following his sickeningly crude attempt to deny Jacques Villeneuve the world title by driving him off the track, is suddenly the guardian of Formula One's good name is bizarre. But then they are as right now on a single issue as they were amoral and cynical a decade ago. The only consistency is in the palsied administration of justice by something now known as the World Motor Sport Council.

Worse still, the WMSC is merely the latest branch of sport's judiciary to ensure that 2007 will not be remembered so much for Roger Federer's epic duel with Rafael Nadal, Lewis Hamilton's spectacular arrival or Padraig Harrington's torment and glory at Carnoustie but a slide into something that looks ever more like anarchy.

Strong word anarchy, known to most people outside of the councils of motor racing, Premiership football and the money-grubbing patrons of the Tour de France, but for their benefit maybe we should give the dictionary entry a topical airing: "General lawlessness and disorder, esp. when thought to result from an absence or failure of government."

We could only presume such a void when the WMSC found the McLaren team guilty of illegally possessing 780 pages of Ferrari's intellectual property but also concluded no advantage was gained from such rule-breaking. There it lay, this extension of the motherlode of strategy and technical brilliance which had made the Italian team not only unbeatable but untouchable for so long gathering dust, and no one, we are asked to believe, did so much as make a paper airplane out of one of those neglected sheets stocked with data.

A ridiculous proposition? Yes, but does it stretch belief in sports justice any more profoundly than the decision not to dock West Ham points for telling lies about the details of Carlos Tevez's registration, a ruling that haunts English football on a daily basis as Manchester United strive to sign the player they believe can help them retain their title just as surely as he preserved the salvation and roughly £25m profit of the Hammers after they paid out their meaningless fine of £5m.

Meanwhile, the Mayor of London talks dreamily of returning the Tour de France to his streets as an event which, according to him and UK Sport, is cleansing itself rather than tottering under the obscene weight of evidence that nothing short of an abandonment of the current shambles, and at least a two-year break, is guaranteed to bring the cyclists and their puppet-masters to their senses.

It seems that wherever you look, within these shores and beyond, there is evidence that sport no longer has the means to discipline itself, not just in the formal way of imposing judgement and punishment, but in conditioning the minds of those who play the games and get the vast rewards.

In America one agony lies in how to react to the epic achievements of Barry Bonds, the steroid-fuelled slugger. Many say it is travesty of administration, a monument to moral laxity, that he has been allowed to encroach on the record of the legendary Hank Aaron. But a substantial number of others say it is Bonds and not his critics who is living in the real word of sport in 2007.

Michael Vick, the quarterback of the Atlanta Falcons, a phenomenal athlete in a position which used to speak of vast prestige, even the American dream, faces charges of organising and betting on dogfighting. In the NBA another scandal rages; a referee, an arbiter of what is right on the court, is embroiled in betting charges.

So it goes, in cricket where the Pakistanis proved you can effectively abandon a Test match and escape significant punishment, and in Italian football, where you can win the Champions' League hot on the heels of a conviction for corruption.

So why do we not roar our approval when Ferrari draw themselves up to a great height of rectitude and declare: "We find it incomprehensible that violating the fundamental principle of sporting honesty does not have, as a logical and inevitable consequence, the application of sanction?" It is probably because Ferrari have operated so powerfully, so long, in a sport where self-interest some time ago ran over and squashed the concept of a moral imperative.

Ross Brawn, the brilliant English engineer who is expected to return to the Ferrari ranks next season, once looked bewildered when he was asked for his reaction to a proposal aimed at something approaching a level racing track, a reduction in the time allowed the big teams for track testing. For a moment it seemed the question had been posed in Urdu. Then Brawn said Ferrari might build a new testing tunnel - or hire an extra army of engineers.

This is not to say that Ferrari are wrong to despise the WMSC leniency towards McLaren; it is just, perhaps, to despair that justice in sport will ever be raised above the stew of politics and power and any inconvenience to the bottom-line ambition of making money. This time Ferrari walk with the angels, but for how long? And, indeed, how indignant were they when Schumacher swung across Villeneuve? Did they petition the rulers of motor racing on the grounds that, though it would be vastly to their benefit, they couldn't hold with a decision that made a mockery of any idea that their sport had any clue about the difference between right and wrong?

It is impossible to miss the link between the McLaren and the Tevez affairs. Wrong-doing has been proved beyond any doubt and all that is missing is the price to pay. McLaren's young hero Hamilton says, in essence, what West Ham said when they escaped with their Premiership life just as the boy racing hero has preserved his chance of an amazing world title win in his first season.

Hamilton's announcement was understandable enough from his perspective. He said: "While it is only my first season in Formula One with the team, I already know and appreciate the commitment and the dedication of the people there. I am pleased with today's decision and can't wait for the rest of the season."

Of course he can't, no more than all those fans engrossed by an extraordinary story of brilliantly precocious achievement. However, it doesn't alter the fact that we are back in West Ham country. We are saying we should draw a line and move on. But to what? A world of sport where anything goes? Where rules can be flouted without risk of serious consequences? We already know the damage is as immense as it is has been inevitable.

Last summer the world's greatest footballer, Zinedine Zidane, behaved like a street thug and what was his reward for appalling violence? Widespread sympathy and an embrace from the President of France. Cheating in the 2006 World Cup came in an epidemic and perhaps the most blatant example was from the artist Thierry Henry, who fell to the ground clutching his face after Spain's Carles Puyol appeared only to make contact with his chest in a robust tackle.

When the hero of English cricket, Freddie Flintoff, compromised his team and his captain in a drunken spree during the World Cup of cricket, Sir Ian Botham said his only crime was to be found out. Flintoff lost the vice-captaincy, not exactly one of the great prizes, and his captain Michael Vaughan was forced to apologise when he suggested Flintoff had let down the side.

The moral gets a little more disturbing by the day. It is that anything goes, anything can be forgiven. Spying on your rival's work is wrong in principle but stripped of consequence when you are found out. It is wrong to lie through your teeth when asked for an honest account of a player's registration - but not wrong enough to threaten a vast financial benefit. It is a sickening scandal when you stage a race supposed to be about courage and competition and lose your favourite and your leader because they have cheated, but not nauseating enough to stop the farce.

Ferrari's case is compelling enough - if anyone is listening. Unfortunately, it seems no one is. And not for some critical time.

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