Foul play - Mike Rowbottom

There is cheating. And then there is cheating. But where does one end and the other start?
Doping. Fixing. Sledging. Intimidating. Time-wasting. Diving. Ever since sporting contests began there have been rules, and for many competitors those rules have been there to be broken. Or maybe just bent a little...
Foul Play offers an inside track on the dark arts employed in sport to gain an unfair advantage - on the football or rugby field, on the tennis or squash court, on the athletics track and the golf course, even on the bowling green or the Subbuteo table.
Some cheating in sport is considered virtually par for the course, while other forms are completely unacceptable. But who, ultimately, makes that judgement? From ball-tampering and bribery in cricket to rugby union's 'Bloodgate' scandal; from Diego Maradona's Hand of God to Alex Ferguson's managerial mind games; from the dodgy dealing of the ancient Greeks and the wily cunning of W.G. Grace to the doping scandals engulfing Marion Jones and Lance Armstrong, it's all here. Foul Play - sometimes funny, sometimes shocking - provides all the evidence you'll ever need that the sporting world is often anything but.

Mike Rowbottom has written about sport for a number of national newspapers over the past 25 years. He has covered five summer Olympics and four winter Olympics, several Wimbledon tournaments and too many football matches to count, as well as many minor sports such as croquet, real tennis and arm wrestling.

The book contains so many tales of skulduggery that many are sure to be new to you. ****
Rugby World

A timely book ... This is an illuminating, entertaining excursion into sport's moral maze. Fair play to the author
Independent on Sunday, Book of the Week