November 3 – Lights, Camera, Corruption!
TODAY in 1997 West Ham United were hosting Crystal Palace in an evening Premiership fixture between the two London sides.
Neil Shipperley had scored twice to put Palace 2-0 up but Harry Redknapp’s Hammers battled back and equalised in the second half. With 65 minutes played, just after West Ham’s second goal, the Boleyn Ground was plunged into darkness as the floodlights went out without warning.
Engineers managed to get them going only for a few seconds before the went out again, and the referee had to abandon the match. The players and fans left the ground completely unaware that the game’s premature end was not down to a simple failure of equipment, but was in fact part of a multi-million pound, far eastern betting scandal.
The match was replayed the following month, with West Ham emerging 4-1 winners but the truth about the abandoned game was not revealed until two years later when some nefarious characters were attempting to pull the scam off again, this time at Charlton Athletic’s home ground, The Valley.
Wai Yuen Liu of Kensington, and Malaysians Eng Hwa Lim and Chee Kew Ong were convicted in August 1999 of being behind a plot to engineer a floodlight failure at the Charlton versus Liverpool match in February of that year. They approached Roger Firth, a Charlton security guard and offered him £20,000 to give them access to the ground. Firth let the cat out of the bag when he offered another security guard £5,000 to help him. The second man alerted police who arrested the others involved.
The plan hinged on the fact that in the far eastern betting markets, if a match is abandoned after half time the bookies will pay out on the result as it stood at the break. If it had succeeded, it would have netted an estimated £30m for the criminals that operate Asia’s illegal betting industry. After the arrest of the four men, it became clear that they had already influenced at least two previous Premiership games without arousing suspicion. The first was the West Ham match, and the second was a match at Selhurst Park where Wimbledon were hosting Arsenal in December 1997.
The scam was crucially different from other match-fixing cases which hinged on players or referees throwing a game or trying to influence the outcome. In this scenario none of the people involved in the match would have any knowledge of the plot so it would arouse no suspicion, and would be more simple to pull off than trying to get a goalkeeper to let in soft goals, for example.
When the case came to court Roger Firth, Eng Hwa Lim and Chee Kew Ong admitted conspiring to cause a public nuisance. Firth was given an 18 month prison sentence, while Eng Hwa Lim and Chee Kew Ong were both jailed for four years. Wai Yuen Liu denied the charge but was also found guilty and received a 30 month sentence.
Tomorrow the final vote will begin for the race to become the next President of the USA, finally bringing to an end what has seemed like years and years of media speculation and general tedium. Unless there is another one of those ugly to-close-to-call situations where both sides refuse to give in, leading to yet more months of toing and froing and recounts and so on and so forth. God preserve us. In any, we will be here as usual to take your mind off the whole thing. You can start by checking out what else happened on this day in football right here.
Related posts:
- November 3 – The Life of Brian and Lights, Camera, Corruption! Dodgy dealings in London town and Brian Kidd finds out...
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November 14 - Fantastic Mr Fox | On This Football Day on November 14th, 2008
[...] have caused football matches to be delayed over the years from crowd trouble, bad weather, or even dodgy floodlight failures. But today in 1996 a match no less important than the Old Firm derby at Parkhead between Celtic and [...]