Close to 21 years ago the late Bill Hogg, then secretary/CEO of the Scottish Rugby Union made a declaration claiming his sport would never turn professional. He was widely mocked when it did so just a few months later.

Having been among those who felt most strongly about the need for players to be rewarded for their commitment, particularly when we knew that some were being heftily remunerated under the table, I was pleased he was proved wrong. However looking back on Hogg’s wishful thinking, I could not help but wonder about the consequences when I saw professional rugby’s charge sheet from last weekend.

Gouging, biting, testicle grabbing, punching, assaulting a referee… It was always a brutal game but there is an increasing sense that in pursuit of ever greater rewards participants are prepared to resort to anything.

Which takes us to what happened next in Scotland in 1995 after the sport went open.

Faced with the challenges presented by running a professional game and the power that gave them to look after those on the shop floor, the SRU committee’s first act was to agree - like MPs voting themselves inflation busting salary hikes while refusing wage increases to key public sector workers – to pay themselves.

In its way, then, the foul play being perpetrated by rugby players, disgusting as much of it is, is relatively honest compared to the various crises afflicting world sport at the moment.

The biggest, most commercial sports are all being horribly tainted by allegations of doping and match-fixing, but most of all, corruption on the part of greedy administrators with tennis the latest to come under increased and long-overdue scrutiny.

As each scandal, whether it be the performance enhancing drug abuse in top American sport and Tour de France cycling, corruption at FIFA, or both in the case of athletics’ IAAF where some are still bewilderingly and worryingly claiming that people who have been on the board for many years are best placed to clean it up, there is earnest comment across the media questioning how long it has been going on.

In that context an observation this week from Andy Murray, who admitted he had been aware of match-fixing problems since he was “quite young”, caught the eye.

Regular readers will know Scotland’s greatest ever sportsman has no greater admirer, however while understanding his sentiments, I think his emphasis may have been the wrong way around when saying: “I just think it should be tennis that does a better job of explaining. Young players shouldn’t have to read it in the press. You have to be proactive and go and speak to the players rather than them reading about it in the newspapers or listening to it on the TV or the radio. The more proactive you are in educating young players the better in matters like this.”

Where we differ is that I believe the role of a free press is central to addressing these matters by maximising scrutiny, which in turn depends on the resolve of individuals within the media.

That, however, has become a major issue in itself in a world in which PR systems have been designed to bribe and bully the vast majority of the media into submissiveness when it comes to dealing with the most influential individuals and organisations.

In that regard David Walsh, The Sunday Times journalist whose 13 year campaign eventually uncovered the scale of Lance Armstrong’s lies, must feel like it is Groundhog Day as the athletics and in this case wider establishment rallies round those he is pursuing at the IAAF.

What seemed to be among the most upsetting things for Walsh when on Armstrong’s trail was the opposition encountered from fellow journalists who were not asking the right questions, whether through misplaced loyalty, guilt or embarrassment and there is evidence of that happening again.

Few, of course, have the time or resources to dig as deeply or persistently as Walsh has. However those manufacturing what was referred to in Armstrong’s case as ‘the big lie’ do not come from nowhere. They are men and women who were not born corrupt, but nor did they suddenly become so upon gaining influence at global level. They learned their tricks while climbing the ladder.

Which brings me back all those years to the SRU in particular, but Scottish sport more broadly in the past 20 years since rugby lost its innocence.

That decision by Murrayfield administrators to pay themselves feels symbolic because in the interim the sums paid to people to run Scottish sport have grown exponentially, not least in relation to what has been achieved through their efforts.

Questions should be asked, particularly relating to how money is generated and spent and there are people in the media who know what they are but are unwilling to raise them because of the impact it will have on relationships with influential figures.

As our media commentators pontificate on sport's global scandals of the day, then, they need to look closely at what more they could be doing to ensure that dubious practice does not go unchallenged at whatever level, however uncomfortable that may sometimes make things.

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