Betting scandal that rocked football in the 60s... all exposed by

ON April 12, 1964, football fans were stunned as the Sunday People’s front-page splash headline screamed out at them from newsstands across the country.

‘The Biggest Sports Scandal of the Century’, it read.

And there followed the report that would bring shame on three Sheffield Wednesday stars — two of them England internationals — and a crooked former Everton and Charlton player who’d masterminded the whole affair.

Jimmy Gauld was the least heralded of the quartet but, as the ringleader, it was his confession which gave infamy to them all.

The Scot was paid £7,240 by the newspaper — a staggering sum which would equate to more than £150,000 these days — although he would end up paying a £5,000 fine and with four years of his life. Owls stars Peter Swan (above on his way to court), capped 19 times by England, Tony Kay, who’d been capped once, and David ‘Bronco’ Layne all received four months’ jail time and life bans from football.

Swan and Layne successfully appealed their bans to allow them a return to the game when the Football Association amended its rules in 1971, giving players the right of appeal. Kay’s ban was lifted in 1973 but he didn’t return to football.

Jail

In total, 10 players would go to jail as the shockwaves of their actions reverberated throughout the English game.

Inside-forward Gauld had failed to make the grade at Aberdeen but after firing for Irish side Waterford he joined Charlton in 1955 and, a year later, was signed by Everton. Gauld spent one season at Goodison Park before moving to Plymouth, who he helped win promotion to Division

Two, and two years later he joined Swindon for a club-record £6,500.

He performed well there but left under a cloud the following summer with the club unsettled by suggestions he had helped fix a 6-1 defeat by Port Vale.

“Swindon were comfortably in the middle of the league, with nothing to win or lose, so it didn’t seem such a terrible thing to do,” he would later admit.

Gauld, then 29, joined Scottish side St Johnstone but was soon back in England with Mansfield.

However, a broken leg suffered on Boxing Day in 1960 brought his career to an end, which is when he sought a darker way to make money.

Gauld knew Layne from their Swindon days and he contacted the marksman, with the two men conspiring that a clash with Ipswich in December 1962 was ripe for picking. Layne approached Swan and Kay, and with Gauld having agreed to cover each man’s £50 stake the trio bet against their own team — a wager that came in with a 2-0 defeat. On the same day, Gauld had also targeted Lincoln versus Brentford and Oldham versus York, and everything played out for him and his associates.

He waited until April 1963 to launch his next fix in the Fourth Division clash between Bradford Park Avenue and Bristol Rovers.

The game ended 2-2 but the plot was later discovered, with Rovers’ Esmond Million and Keith Williams fined and handed life bans.

Admitted

The following August, Hartlepool’s Ken Thomson admitted betting with the same syndicate on his side to lose to Exeter. And a week after, Gauld was named as the mastermind by the Sunday People, to whom he would later confess all as he incriminated Swan, Kay and Layne. Mansfield’s Brian Phillips and York’s Jack

Fountain were sentenced to 15 months in jail, while Dick Beattie was found guilty of fixing Portsmouth matches and got nine months.

Mansfield’s Sammy Chapman, Walsall’s Ron Howells and Thomson were all sentenced to six months.

Gauld was found to have made £3,275 — roughly £80,000 today — illicitly as well as his money from the People.

In an interview in 2006, Swan said: “We lost the game fair and square. But I still don’t know what I’d have done if we’d been winning.”

In a 2004 interview, Kay said: “Do I regret placing that bet? Well, I think I was harshly punished.

“I won only £150 from the bet, but my whole career was destroyed.

“They took away the game I loved and I have never really recovered from that.”

Ironically, Kay had been named man of the match in the game that brought him down.