On November 25th 2011 there was a fixed League Two match involving Barnet and Macclesfield.
Barnet won 2-1 via two penalties from Izale McLeod and the later sending off of Roy Draper just two minutes after Macclesfield had pulled a goal back.
The referee for this event was Dean Whitestone.
He is still an active official, his last refereeing spot being QPR's 1-0 victory over Charlton and he is selected as 4th Official for several Premier League games per season.
The current Lincoln City manager Gary Simpson was manager of Macclesfield at the time of this fixed match.
He reported his suspicions to the authorities.
Simpson: "I was told there had been an irregular betting pattern on it [the game] during the game and before the game... We heard from the authorities that it was correct and there had been an irregular betting pattern in the game."
So.
A fixed match.
Apparent involvement of a referee according to Simpson.
Knowledge of event by authorities.
No action.
Yesterday the Football Conference put out a statement: "The Football Conference takes all matters relating to the integrity of
the game very seriously but it cannot make any comment on today's story
as it would be inappropriate to do so."
And the impact was considerable in football terms in that Macclesfield were relegated from the Football League in season 2011/12 while Barnet finished third-bottom.
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On October 29th 2008 there was a fixed Premier League match involving Fulham and Wigan Athletic.
Fulham (managed by Roy Hodgson) won 2-0 with two goals by Andy Johnson who was so certain that he would score that he revealed a t-shirt boasting of such even though he hadn't scored a goal for 7 months. He boasted of his prior knowledge on the Match of the Day interview post-game.
There were irregular betting patterns on the game.
We posted a blog about this event and, two days later, received threats and menaces of the 'we know where you live' variety.
These emails were traced to the London offices of a leading football agent who was closely associated with the Fulham/Wigan fix.
We informed this individual of our forensics and went to the police.
Later, we approached Paul Kelso of the Daily Telegraph over this fixed event when Hodgson became manager of England - Kelso was the Chief Sports Reporter of the Telegraph.
His refusal to meet despite betting patterns, testimonies, evidence was assumed to be related to previous work co-operations with the agent at a different newspaper.
Yet it is now the Telegraph that is exposing lower league and international match corruption in English, Irish and Scottish football.
To say that we are curious about Telegraph attention on the shit that rises to the top would be an understatement worthy of note!
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This investigation into corruption in the English game CANNOT be allowed to continue to its fruition as figures at the very summit of British society and the game will be implicated - administrators, senior government ministers, club owners, newspaper editors, managers, referees, players, agents, lawyers, commentators, football writers, ex-players, accommodating European-based bookmakers, the entire business hierarchies of the Isle of Man, Gibraltar, Jersey and Guernsey, the mafiosi groups of several British cities...
Gordon Taylor's betting millions are just the tip of the iceberg.
Oh!
And he's still in a job, isn't he?
For many more itemised angles on corruption follow us on Twitter @FootballIsFixed
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