“Surf contests perfect for match-fixing!”

You’d struggle to design a better platform. No other sport is so relentlessly, plausibly unpredictable. 

Are you familiar with The Dogs? Do you have The Dogs in Australia and/or America? Maybe you do and maybe it’s the same as our The Dogs, but maybe not.

The Dogs is dog racing. The Dogs is men with hard, lined faces and harder-to-understand dialects. The Dogs is a dilapidated stadium beside an industrial estate on the periphery of a city. The Dogs is Portakabins selling burgers and imitation tomato ketchup. The Dogs is sheepskin jackets, flat caps and wads of cash. The Dogs is gambling on animals running circles round sandy tracks. The Dogs is where the common man goes when he doesn’t have a nice enough hat or a double-barrelled surname to wear to the horses.

Chas Smith would probably go to the horses, but would call himself Charlie that day. The dogs is for men like Nick Carroll. Men with gruff voices, thick fingers, and questionable internet browsing history. Longtom might also go to the dogs, just to make sure Doherty wasn’t in bed with any of them.

So you get The Dogs.

The Dogs is also an almighty fucking con.

I know this to be true because I went to The Dogs once. It was a little like Chas stooping to listen to The People, except that I am The People. Sort of. I actually occupy a sort of chameleon hinterland.

Anyway, I went once with a friend whose father was very well known. (He worked in crime. Committing, not combating).

Shortly after we arrived a man with a shaved head and wearing a leather jacket sidled up beside my friend, tapped him on the shoulder and hushed cryptically in his ear: “Number 6. From your dad. Keep it quiet” before vanishing into the crowd.

Number 6, it turned out, was a scrawny, desperate looking greyhound that was slavering and sweating in the trap below us, waiting to start the next race. To the punters, Number 6 merely represented a number on an animated, living roulette wheel. To us, Number 6 was the dog seemingly predetermined to win the next race.

And so it was.

My friend hadn’t expected this tip. He was taken aback as we were. He hadn’t even told his father we would be there. His old man always seemed to know things. None of us questioned it at the time or since. None of us fancied wearing concrete boots at the bottom of the river.

I’ve always been fond of a punt. Before I became persona non-grata with most of the bookies (another story) I gambled, in earnest, on surfing. Lots of times I’ve felt the same as I did that day at The Dogs. That it was all rigged and I wasn’t part of it.

And The Dogs isn’t exactly an outlier. There is controversy related to suspicious betting patterns in almost every sport, at every level.

Surfing might not be rigged.

But if it isn’t I’d ask two questions. Why not? And how long before it is? It’s tailor-made for match-fixing and gambling corruption. You’d struggle to design a better platform. I can’t think of another activity so relentlessly, plausibly unpredictable.

Surfing is not bound by the rigidity of finish lines or the integrity of stopwatches or goal line technology. It’s merely subjective. It would seem monumentally foolish to gamble on the outcome of something subject to the opinions of strangers, or the mercy of the weather, or the whims of Richie Portly.

And none of the controversy over shocking decisions ever amounts to anything, does it? No-one is ever held accountable. No-one is ever moderated. Sure, there’ll be a bit of internet furore, but it soon drifts away, free of repercussion.

Determining the winner of a surf competition is considerably more arbitrary than determining if one dog can run faster than another. It’s much easier to manufacture a desired outcome and make it look genuine.

Surfing is not bound by the rigidity of finish lines or the integrity of stopwatches or goal line technology. It’s merely subjective. It would seem monumentally foolish to gamble on the outcome of something subject to the opinions of strangers, or the mercy of the weather, or the whims of Richie Portly.

A much easier way to profit from pro surfing is simply the willing (or unwilling) cooperation of someone involved. For the most part that’s one human being. One low-to-mid-tier surfer who can make a shit lot more cash by not catching waves rather than catching them. It might be late into a season, they might be backed up on the QS, on course for mid-table obscurity. What do they have to lose?

Who cares about another 25th place when you can compensate with enough illicit cash to feed your family or fund another campaign? All for simply throwing a heat and shouldering a little guilt. Perhaps you don’t even need to be coerced, perhaps you just bet on yourself to lose.

Think of the alibis!

I didn’t think it was going to be a good one…the wind wasn’t right…I didn’t hear the score…I fell off…I just didn’t get the best waves…the foam ball got me…he/she just surfed better…

A surfer might reasonably convince himself that he didn’t throw the heat on purpose. Memories of surf rarely reflect reality. The permutations of how to throw a heat and make it look (or perhaps even feel) completely plausible are endless.

Surfing and gambling are a match rigged in heaven. It’s only a matter of time until it goes to the dogs.