'Gifts’ abound for refs

Press, 26 October 1984, Page 32

'Gifts’ abound for refs

By

FRANK DUGGAN

World-class soccer referees are not the only sporting officials to be offered “incentives” to influence the result of a match. A New Zealand basketball referee said yesterday that on a recent overseas trip, a pre-match “gift” he was offered “smelt very highly of a bribe.” The referee, who wished to remain unamed, said that it is common overseas for gifts to be given to referees before a match. “It is a matter of course, of Eastern courtesy, but it is usually done on court,” he said. “But if the gift is made beforehand then it is a question of how a referee handles it; it’s up to his

conscience, his moral fibre.” “Most times the individual ignores the connotations. However, there have been times, unfortunately, when the pre-match gift is used for a dual purpose and some referees appear to have succumbed,” he said. “Only once have I felt that a gift I was being offered was being done for something of an advantage, and it was not necessarily done by an individual sports body or the players themselves. However, like most referees I was aware of the connotations of the situation.”

The referee said that some of the gifts were substantial, “perhaps the people offering them feel that it is

something of an insurance policy,” he said. “I know of one official who was offered what he considered an obvious bribe and threw the people out. The next morning he was talking to some people and found a camera in his hand.” The referee said that as sport became more political, offers of incentives or gifts were becoming more numerous. “Where does it really begin and end — that is up to the integrity of each individual refereee,” he said.

However, the referee had seen evidence on his overseas tours of incentives or gifts being accepted by referees knowing full well

what they meant. “Sporting prestige ranks very highly with a lot of developing countries, and some established countries for that matter, and some people will go to no end of trouble to attempt an assurance of a high ranking,” he said. “Difficult situations can also crop up in countries where bookmaking is legalised.” In most developed countries, however, the referees have found that gifts or “kick-backs” are foreign to their nature. “New Zealand is the best case in point; I have never seen nor heard of it here and under the present rigid controls of the administrators, it will probably never happen,” he said.