Michael Brown: It's time punters hit back

Earl Warren, who was instrumental in the breakdown of racial segregation in the US, famously said, "I always turn to the sports pages first, which records people's accomplishments. The front page has nothing but man's failures."

Sadly, it's becoming harder and harder to say that. Professionalism slowly destroyed romanticism in sport but greed has destroyed much of its credibility.

The events of the past few weeks have made for compelling but ultimately depressing reading - the Pakistani cricket betting scandal, allegations of fixing in rugby league, and punishments handed out to snooker player John Higgins for taking a bribe and Ferrari for ordering Felipe Massa to allow Fernando Alonso to win the German Grand Prix.

Most recently, we've received news of Kiwi cyclist Adam Stewart importing drugs in the lead-up to next month's Commonwealth Games. The last example is arguably the most alarming from a New Zealand perspective.

There's always been a widespread perception that this country is immune to drugs in sport, that our athletes are clean and virtuous.

Yes, Russian-born Kiwi pole vaulter Denis Petouchinski had his silver medal from the 1998 Commonwealth Games stripped for using steroids, cyclist Jeremy Yates was banned for two years for high testosterone levels and last year marathon runner Liza Hunter-Galvan became the first New Zealander to test positive for EPO. But we have a largely unblemished record.

In truth, it's naive to think other New Zealanders haven't used drugs to try to get ahead. There have been many who have wondered about various athletes in the past but nothing was ever proven. Ignorance is bliss.

New Zealanders represent a cross-section of the global society. There are crooks and cheats, swindlers and shifty characters as much as there are honest, decent and hard-working types.

Some must have used drugs at some stage. We might never know who they were.

It is into this increasingly depressing environment that our next generation of sports men and women are growing up. It's hard to know what the landscape will look like by the time they reach their peak.

Will match-fixing or spot-fixing be common, with administrators largely powerless to stop the blight on the game because of the millions of dollars being made behind the scenes?

Will sport become a glorified version of WWF where results are pre-arranged, moves or highlights sorted out in advance and where the theatre is more important than the actual contest?

Will the chemists still be one step ahead of the drug testers?

There has to be a time when the punter fights back, when television companies refuse to pay ridiculous money to televise something, when sponsors turn their backs on supporting a sport or event and when fans decide they would rather spend their hard-earned cash on something more meaningful and enjoyable, like dinner out with the mother-in-law.

We might have seen an example of that this week.

Just 5821 people watched England beat Pakistan - presumably it was a legitimate result - in a Twenty20 international in Cardiff. Nearly 10,000 tickets were unsold. More than 4000 seats were empty in the previous match.

Previously, tickets to English cricket matches were rarer than an Englishman winning Wimbledon. There might be an argument for fan fatigue but it's more likely both English and Pakistan fans didn't want to have anything to do with a series tainted by cheating.

There is no joy or reward in watching cheats. They don't deserve our money and, sadly, it affects the honest athletes out there who make up the majority.

We repeatedly tell our children to give 100 per cent when they play sport and to play with integrity and honesty but it sounds attenuate when top 'professionals' disregard these attributes.

Sport will survive, it always has. Perhaps like the Renaissance, there needs to be an enlightenment period.

There needs to be a determination to clean things up, and that means severe penalties for those who break the rules. It also requires sports people to ostracise their peers who transgress.

There were signs of that in the past week. Stewart was left in no doubt as to what fellow Kiwi cyclists Greg Henderson and Hayden Godfrey thought of him when they left messages on their twitter sites. The pair know the stain it has left and what it will mean for them in a sport already battling credibility.

Last week, the A-League introduced retrospective bans for players for simulation, or diving, in football. It's an excellent initiative and, with no right of appeal, swift and effective.

Other sports should take the A-League's lead. There are too many who escape punishment because administrators don't want to make tough decisions, while others worm their way out of censure through legal loopholes.

By getting tougher, athletes will be less tempted to break the rules. And then we might be able to read about people's accomplishments on the back pages again.