sport news OLIVER HOLT: Don't make Ivan Toney a pariah following his betting ban trends now
The picture that emerged of England striker Ivan Toney on Friday when the written reasons for his eight-month ban from football were released by the FA was of a man in thrall to an illness, an illness fed and watered by the sport that has exiled him.
Toney deserved to be punished for his 232 breaches of gambling regulations and the details of the offences he committed shone a light on a seamy football sub-culture of deracinated young men awash with disposable income and free time, bombarded by betting adverts, ripe for exploitation.
Toney was diagnosed with a gambling addiction by a psychiatric expert as part of the investigation into his gambling activities, which only heightens concerns about the mixed messages being sent to players who have been running out on to the pitch with the names of gambling companies on their shirts and on perimeter hoardings at every ground.
There was nothing in the written reasons, sobering and extensive though they were, to change the mind of those who continue to feel that the punishment meted out to Toney — particularly the ban on even training with Brentford for the next four months — is not just harsh but counter-productive.
Some greeted the revelation in the written reasons that Toney had bet on his own team to lose 13 times with the horror such a statement would usually deserve. Except, in Toney’s case, he wasn’t actually playing for his ‘own team’ when he gambled on them.
Ivan Toney shouldn't be made a pariah after he was diagnosed as a gambling addict
Toney did not bet against his own team in any matches he was in a position to influence
When Toney bet on Newcastle to lose, he was out on loan at Wigan. On the couple of occasions he bet on Wigan to lose, he wasn’t even in the matchday squad, let alone on the bench or in the team.
He broke the rules. He shouldn’t have been betting on football at all. He should have known better. And, again, he deserves to be punished. But let’s not try to make this seem worse than it was by pretending he could have influenced results.
More than 60 years ago, English football was rocked by its last great betting scandal. Sheffield Wednesday players Peter Swan, Tony Kay and David ‘Bronco’ Layne each bet £50 on their team to lose at Alf Ramsey’s Ipswich Town in December 1962 at odds of
