Strong Punishment For Gambling Footballers? Don't Bet On It.

We have a little game in our country called Australian Rules Football - AFL. Some six million people fill the stands each year watching this national sport. That's a fairly signicant percentage of the population, which just ticked over to 20.7 million. There is a rule for players that they must not bet on the sport.

Been a bit of a furore recently with an announcement that four players have been found to have bet on matches. No indication that the players have been involved in match fixing or betting against their own teams. We are talking bets of between $10 and $16000. I laughed when I read that one player had bet $10 and been caught up in this affair. It's still against the rules however. The punishments could have been far worse but the AFL knows that more players have been involved, just not found.

I wonder if there will be an appeal and, if so, would the tribunal offer the player "double or nothing" as a punishment? Don't bet on it.