Don't Swear By It - Thai Officials Receive Unmerited Absolution by Matt Riley: 2014

Don't Swear By It: Thai Officials Receive Unmerited Absolution
by Matt Riley
30th July, 2014

High farce was robbed of its power yesterday when the Thai FA decided to force (on pain of a one year ban) over a hundred of its officials to swear before the Emerald Buddha that they would officiate with integrity. Farce became depressing reality when the referees were led to this auspicious location by Thanom "The Bomber" Borikut (pictured). This whistle for hire is now, after his promise to change the habits of a career, free to referee in the final third of the season. Chonburi and BEC Tero fans: be afraid; be very afraid. Supporters of both clubs need to plot the bomber as he uses two key strategies to reward his paymasters.

Although Buriram United are too powerful to nobble directly, he will work on ways to assist either rivals SCG Muang Thong United or officiate clubs about to play the champions to make sure they don't enter games against them weakened by suspensions or downcast through defeat. When given chance to officiate directly for The Sharks or Tero he will either plot to swing a close game against them or, if the margin is too wide, sanction one of their vital players to activate a suspension.  But, I hear you cry, what about the weekly referee raffles that prevent any of that type of shenanigans? To that, I invite you to watch the excellent 1994 film, Quiz Show.

Revered as an all-American example of  clean-cut aspiration, Herbert Stempel dominated the game show Twenty One but, after the initial support, viewers and sponsors grew tired of his dominant but increasingly unappealing personality. So they introduced Charles Van Doren, who had the twin advantages of an appealing personality and a notebook with all the answers in. When the roof caved in on their increasingly contrived sequences of dead heats as cliffhangers, the winner of over a million dollars in today's money could just as easily have been talking about the integrity of results in Thai football:

"It's silly and distressing to think that people don't have more faith in quiz shows."

Thailand has huge underground betting on football, referees are poorly paid and trained, club presidents wield enormous political power and millions of dollars rides on results. What could possibly go wrong? One month later van Doren was singing from a very different song book:

"I was involved, deeply involved in a deception."

Referee raffles are the misdirection that Twenty One used to fool the audience with ceremony and subterfuge. The game show had a respected host, the then-revered medium of television and an audience that, even when the story broke, at first refused to believe it. Here there is not even that veneer of pretence: the only question is how much light we dare shine on what is half hiding. The match officials' oaths must have turned to dust in their mouths.

“We have performed... and will perform our duty with honesty.’’