Kieran Shannon of the Tribune - Match Fixing

[Lone Shark]

Below is an article taken from yesterday's Sunday Tribune - my comments to follow

SOME GAA players and teams are manipulating scores and even results in National League games for betting purposes, according to insiders in the bookmaking industry.

One team in particular are viewed with huge suspicion within the business for the disproportionate number of bets that have been placed on them being surprisingly beaten in league games and for them deciding to switch free-takers in mid-match. So a player with longer odds can finish as the team's leading scorer.

There have also been cases with that county and others where there has been an inordinate number of bets placed on an unlikely player scoring the first point or goal of a game.

And with players becoming increasingly disgruntled about the lack of monetary compensation for their commitment to their sport, one bookmaker believes that it is inevitable within the next two years that the GAA will have its first major betting scandal on its hands with even championship games . . . and especially hurling with its new qualifiers format . . . being vulnerable to manipulation.

"Gaelic games are undoubtedly entering a dangerous phase and within the business we've already had some glaring examples of manipulation, " a bookmaker with one of the country's leading betting agents said.

"It happens in all sports where players feel financially aggrieved, that they're getting a slice of all the money they're helping to generate.

"You had it with Shoeless Jackson and the Chicago White Sox. The Hanse Cronje affair stemmed from cricket players being annoyed with making peanuts while the sport was enjoying global exposure. And a huge macro factor in the manipulation we've seen in Gaelic games comes from a sense of disgruntlement some players have when they see their nonplaying friends and peers investing in two or three properties and financially reaping the benefits of the Celtic Tiger which they've had to forsake because of their commitment to Gaelic games."

So far bookmakers have yet to come across any case when the outcome of a championship match has been doctored, and the lack of any shock results in the 2005 championship in both hurling and football is seen as evidence of the honesty of intercounty players and the integrity of the championships.

However, there are competitions, like the early rounds of the AIB Club Championship, when some teams are satisfied with just winning their own county championship, and especially the National Leagues, in which bookmakers believe leading scorers and even outcomes have been doctored for financial gain.

"There is clear evidence to us that there has been quite a lot of messing going on, particularly in the league, when people aren't really going to make an issue if there's been a surprise result, " says one bookmaker.

"Naturally you're going to get surprises when nothing underhand has gone on but we've had too many cases now where there have been unusual results and leading scorers coupled with unusual interest in those games.

"Two years ago, I'd have said there was no chance of the GAA ever having a Cronje-like scandal. But with some of the messing we've seen in recent years in the League, I wouldn't be so sure now. I think it's only time before someone tries to pull off a big one."

[Lone Shark]

For the record I would like to say that this is utter and unequivocal rubbish. I understand that everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but in my considerable experience (5 years as GAA odds compiler for Paddy Powers) dodgy betting patterns just don't happen, and to be honest the sport is out on it's own in terms of honesty.

Yes bookies do occasionally get hit - but here's the nub - they get hit when they make mistakes. Of course players aren't trying 100% for every game they play. If you have a final round NHL match and one team needs to win to make the final and the other team has nothing to play for and a Munster Championship match in two weeks, of course there will be varying levels of effort - but the fact is that in all my time I've never even suspected that players are not trying for financial benefit.

The games that he suspects this kind of stuff is ongoing in is the first red flag. In truth, to do this right 7 or 8 lads at least would have top be in on it. So even allowing for doing it for a meagre grand each - which when you take into account the risk to their reputation is very little - you need to bet to win 8 grand. Anyone who bets on GAA - as I do - will realise that betting to win that amount of money is just not feasible. Unless it's championship, bookies don't want to lay GAA bets, because they are scared. They provide the service because they have to, but they want you betting on numbers, horses, and televised soccer. Trying to get enough on to win that amount on a league match wouldn't happen. As for getting that amount on scorer bets - laughable.

All too often bookies cry foul when they just haven't done their homework. Around three years ago myself and some friends saw Sports spread offering supremacy on end of season league matches. The last game in div 2B was Carlow vs Waterford, in Dr. Cullen Park. Both teams had beaten london and lost their other five games, Carlow by an average of five points, Waterford by ten. Carlow were in front of their own crowd, and were as they always have been a better football team. Yet this crowd went Waterford favourites. Myself and some friends got stuck in, and made a decent wedge on the game - Carlow won at a canter.

Afterwards Sports Spread went crying to the papers, saying Waterford weren't trying and were clearly thrwing the game - thankfully no-one listened to them.

I'm quite outraged at all this, and would loe to talk to the "insider" who came up with this garbage - I'd also quite like to tell Kieran Shannon what to do with himself for casting this slur on GAA players everywhere, and one football team in particular.

[Bogman]

Does anybody know which county is Chief Suspect in all of this?

Would it be libellous to try to work out who it is?

[Bord na Mona man]

And with players becoming increasingly disgruntled about the lack of monetary compensation for their commitment to their sport, one bookmaker believes that it is inevitable within the next two years that the GAA will have its first major betting scandal on its hands with even championship games

A lot of GAA articles are now trying to evoke a sense of disgruntlement over a lack of pay for players.
This is yet another example.

Journos are hoping it starts some momentum so that they can push the agenda even more. If you keep continually mentioning the topic (as is now happening) it will start to stick in people's consciousness.

I definitely think that this a knock on from the Rule 42 debate in 2 ways.

1: GAA media people now have to find a new pet topic to bang on about. i.e. Professionalism
2: The media feel that they themselves levered the gates of Croke Park open (which to an extent they did). Now its time to focus on bringing another rigid pillar of the GAA crashing down.

The article itself is vague waffle btw. The few "facts" that are supplied don't stack up. It would be more at home in some red top tabloid for the enjoyment of wolf whistling brickies!

[The Biff]

As a regular Trib buyer, I was very disappointed with this type of article. The complete lack of any real detail means that anyone could have just made it up just to have a nice Headline on top. As LS has shown above, it would be very hard to substantiate even the concept of this, so I hope Mr. Shannon is pursued by Croke Park to either "put up or shut up".

[Hyper]

I'd agree with LS here. You wouldn't be able to get laid to win any amount substantial enough to make it worthwhile for a person/team to put their careers in jeopardy. If you tried to have €100 with Ladbrokes they'd run a mile. But nearly all bookmaker will refuse bets eventually or certainly curtail the stakes if you are consistently winning. So maybe someone with a good in depth knowledge of the GAA and who likes a punt might be on a roll at that particular time that Shannon is on about.
I know myself that i'v been very close to nailing a few big ones the last three weeks on the club games....

[The Biff]

Last night, a mate told me that when hre read the article, his immediate suspicions were on our own Hurlers and that freak loss to Carlow last year. I dismissed this suggestion but it's sad to think that many counties reputations could be damaged by cheap-shots like this.

Earlier, I was listening to Newstalk's Off-the-Ball and they had Kieran Shannon on the phone for an interview about the article. He didn't add any real "flesh" to any of his allegations. In my view, he almost seemed to be backing down a bit by saying that what he was really referring to was Messing" with the odds. He continually used the word "messing" to describe the types of betting that were the basis of his concerns.

I use the word "messing" to describe what my 6 year old son does with a bucket of water and the play-sand in the back yard. Shannon has done himself a great dis-service.

[Lone Shark]

I say this as an industry insider, and I stress that there is no factual basis for it, but in general suspicion would be pointed towards the Galway footballers.

However this has arisen out of two games where there were solid reasons for people opposing the team, both of which would have been known to bookies doing their research - one was a league game the day after a prominent team member's wedding, and one was when the team had touched down from a training holiday - that morning. In both cases money went on in Galway from observers who knew of these facts, but the Galway players themselves had no part in it - and both games were lost, obviously enough.

I'll be interested to see if Shannon follows it up next week - I expect he's pulling out for all he's worth to be honest. A few follow up calls to the industry would have told him that.

[An Bearcán Bearaigh]

It's interesting that the Lone Shark should extend the digit of suspicion towards the Galway footballers. I don't remember either event of which he speaks, but I do remember RTÉ had to stop their wheeze of viewers voting for the live game Man of the Match award about three years ago. Padraig Joyce won the Man of the Match award pulling up when Galway played Mayo in the Connacht Championship of 2002, despite the fact that Joyce was largely anonymous for the duration of the game. It was a reasonable suspicion to draw that certain fellows fancied making a few pound and did this by investing heartily in Joyce during the week and then texting like bedamned for the duration of the voting.

I should underline however, that this in no way is to impugne the reputation of the Galway footballers, who have been exemplary in their play and their conduct of themselves. I'm sure that the Lone Shark himself would second this with regard to his own examples, which is simply a case of poor research on the odds-compilers' part, and then a sloppy attempt to cover their backs when they were on the carpet before their bosses on Monday morning. Much easier to allege dirty work at the crossroads than to say put the hand up and say we screwed up.

I'm disappointed in a journalist with the reputation and integrity of Kieran Shannon being caught up in this. As the Shark (God, he's wise, that Lone Shark) pointed out, it's more to do with ignorance of the bookmaking process than anything else that this story was written in the first place. I don't think Shannon would be that au fait with the ins and outs of the bookmarkers' black arts; if he had been, he would surely have told his informant to pull the other one, as it's got bells on.

The question of players pouting that they get insufficient reward is one for another day...

[Mighty Pair O' Hands]

The trib carried a letter yesterday from Danny Lynch, GAA PRO, lambasting the previous article and stating that the GAA had contacted both Paddy Power and another bookies to enquire into the substance of the allegations. Lynch suggested that both bookies had no complaints about match fixing in the GAA at all.

[turk]

Also an article from shannon standing over what he said with some cases, ie team a this, team b that etc.
obviously no specifics could be given for libel and that.

[Lone Shark]

Shannon followed up again yesterday, with a few more examples. Again they were all seriously porous. One involved a sub betting on his teams number of wides - if this is true it's reprehensible, but I suspect it's anything but, and probably just some guy of the same name.

He then remarked on some league games - and said that punters were betting on the handicap. I've never seen handicap betting on league games.

All in all, he just blithely ignored the fact that teams, particularly in an amateur arena, can all have off days because of personal factors. The truth is that it's only natural that people associated with the team will know of these factors. To impugn the team themselves is disgraceful, and I have emailed Shannon to that effect, and I expect many others will follow suit.

Regarding the man of the match affair, I remember watching it the first week, before anyone knew they were going to do it on a phone in basis and there was no money on. I contacted RTE during the week to ask about the number of votes they received, so as to see how easy it would be to rig. They confirmed that it was in the hundreds rather than the thousands, so I pulled the market for PP. Boyles and Cashmans continued to trade it, and duly got hit by a huge flood of bets on the double, Joyce for Galway and Shefflin for Kilkenny - to be fair Shefflin would have won it anyway that day, he got 0-11 against us in Thurles if memory serves.

Anyway, I think we're all on the same page here - the players are innocent and Shannon is a clown for listening to some whinging (and clearly inept) bookie.