Rugby league must clamp down hard on players' bets

Of all the games we play, few seemed less susceptible to any kind of corruption than rugby league.

Locked into the old working class kraal of northern England, it was mercilessly hard but scrupulously moral. Few memories of an impressionable youth linger as powerfully as the time Ike Fishwick, Warrington's hooker, laid out an opponent on Salford's ground, turned with great deliberation to every corner of the hostile crowd, delivered the V-sign and then marched, without consultations with the referee, for his early bath.

Discipline was an implicit aspect of the job. Punishment for miscreants was swift and firmly measured.

Now we hear that two St Helens players are alleged to have bet against their own team. When this happened in baseball a street urchin was said to have cried to Shoeless Joe Jackson of the Chicago 'Black' Sox: "Say it ain't so, Joe." The threshold of shock is no doubt pushed somewhat further back early in the 21st century, but certain truths have surely not disappeared entirely.

As in so may other ways, American sport is more willing to act when the foundations are threatened. The iconic Pete Rose is still denied a place in baseball's Hall of Fame because he wagered on games, though never against his own team.

Rugby league, given all that it represents in the minds of loyal and decent followers, cannot afford to be any less strenuous.