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WHEN Southampton legend Matt Le Tissier claimed he had taken part in a failed betting coup, some in English football treated it as a bit of a joke.
Good old Le Tiss, they thought. A God on the pitch but he could not even pull off a simple scam with a throw-in.
But no one should be laughing any more.
Because the alleged incident in 1995 against Wimbledon was not a one-off.
It now appears spot-fixing was rife. Not only at Southampton, but throughout the Premier League.
And with the continuing expansion in legal and illegal betting markets all over the world, the suspicion must be that it is still going on.
And that all the football folk who slammed cricket corruption when the News of the World exposed the Pakistan cheats need to take a long, hard look at their own game.
Claus Lundekvam became a Southampton hero having arrived at The Dell to play alongside Le Tissier a year after the Wimbledon match.
Now he may be remembered as the man who exposed another of English football’s dirty little secrets.
And one of the most shocking things about his account of spot-fixing is... how easy it all was.
The former Norway international said: “It’s something I was involved in for a number of years in England.
“I bet on my own matches. There were often several players who put money in the pot — several hundred pounds each, sometimes a thousand each.
“We would then give the money to one of the staff who would put the money on for us, so we didn’t have to do it ourselves and so create suspicion. We would bet for example on the first throw-in.
“We would have an agreement with the opposing team that whoever had the kick-off would pass the ball back to a defender who would then play it forward down the channel where an opposing defender would kick the ball out for a throw-in.
“It’s a pretty normal start to a game, no one would have suspected and it was very easy for us to control the little things like that.
“We could make deals with the opposing captain in relating to betting on the first throw, the first corner, who started with the ball, a yellow card, a penalty.
“For a while we did this almost every week.”
His claims of conspiracy with players on other teams imply widespread corruption.
And Lundekvam is adamant that Southampton players were not the only ones breaking FA rules and the law of the land by betting on matches in which they were involved.
He added: “I’m not proud of being part of this.
“We were far from alone in this but that doesn’t help. I know it happened at other clubs. It was accepted... in matches at the end of the 1990s.
“The bookies were open to betting on these kind of things and it was easy for us to manipulate.
“I do not think it was sporting or morally right for us to do what we did. But we had a chance to do it then, and that’s just how it was.
“Even though what we did was illegal, it was quite fun to be part of.
“We made a fair amount of money on this. I can’t really remember how much. But we made money on it even though the odds weren’t always high.
“Even when the odds weren’t high, they were safe bets.”
But were the players not earning enough money as players in one of the richest leagues in the world?
Lundekvam, now 39, said: “Yes, absolutely. We footballers live in a bubble.
“We are betting all the time when we are together, whether it’s card games on the bus or something else.
“It’s part of our lifestyle, the adrenalin and the excitement. Whatever we could bet on, we bet on it.”
Stories of players like Steve Claridge losing hundreds of thousands on the horses and rows between England stars over card schools have long been public knowledge.
But apart from Le Tissier’s sort-of-confession, this is the first-time a Premier League player has admitted doing exactly what Pakistan cricketers Salman Butt, Mohammad Amir and Mohammad Asif were found guilty of.
In recent years, there has been greater concern about lower league matches being corrupted by betting.
In 2009, the FA handed down bans to three Accrington Stanley players and one from Bury who had bet on a League Two clash in 2008 between the two clubs.
A number of games in the old Football Conference — a competition now sponsored by betting firm Blue Square — have also come under suspicion.
And earlier this month Kettering chairman George Rolls was banned from football for five years after more than 3,000 breaches of betting regulations between 2007-10 — when he had been chairman at Cambridge United and Weymouth — and for misconduct relating to the investigation.
But the Premier League has remained pretty much undisturbed by betting scandals since the 1990s.
Former Liverpool goalkeeper Bruce Grobelaar and ex-Wimbledon players John Fashanu and Hans Segers were all cleared of allegations of match-fixing.
No players were implicated in the bizarre case of Far Eastern betting syndicates trying to rig games by interfering with floodlights.
Lundekvam’s allegations raise fresh doubts about the English game.
Although the FA rules on betting were less strict back in the late 1990s, he knew that what he and his fellow stars were doing was in breach of those regulations and of the law.
The Premier League said last night that betting was an issue for the FA.
Rolls was charged under the Rule E8 of current FA regulations which make it very clear that any ‘participant’ — from a board member to a player to a tea lady — is forbidden from betting on any competition in which their club is involved.
They are also forbidden from passing on any information which they know or suspect will be used for gambling.
An FA spokesman declined to comment on Lundekvam’s claims but said: “Participants are consistently reminded they cannot bet on any competition in which they are involved.
“The FA has strict policies on this and our sanctions are wide-ranging.
“All participants also have a duty to report any such activity.
“Football works closely with the gambling industry to monitor all markets and activity and we have a unit focused on maintaining the integrity of the sport.”
Of course, there is a distinction between breaking rules on betting and match-fixing.
But the fans who pay big money to watch Premier League matches and the hundreds of millions of armchair supporters who watch the game on TV will now be less certain whether they can trust what they are seeing.
Lundekvam’s allegations came as a result of a betting scandal unfolding in Norway. He said it would be naive to think that such things did not go on in Norwegian football.
The same could now be said of the English game.
