The catalogue of sleaze, corruption and depravity seems endless, enveloping activities from the grassroots to the very pinnacle both internationally and now frighteningly here in the UK. 

From FIFA-gate to endemic doping in athletics and assorted other sports on a mind-boggling scale, to sexism and bullying in cycling and now, most horribilis of all, the unearthing of the historic serial sexual abuse of young footballers on a flabbergasting scale.

Rarely a day passes without the slimy side of sport being brutally exposed on the public prints or the TV screen.

Apart from other unsavoury goings-on we've had a dopey foul-mouthed British world heavyweight champion - Tyson Fury - who by self-admission has gone off his rocker and has forfeited his title.

An Olympic luminary - Olympic Council of Ireland chief Patrick Hickey - charged with large-scale ticket racketeering which he denies.

A knighted British cycling icon - Sir Bradley Wiggins - and his Team Sky outfit investigated over the "therapeutic use" of performance-enhancing substances and one of the sport’s leading ladies, Lizzie Armistead, investigated over controversially missing drugs tests on the eve of the of the Olympics.

And cycling, arguably Britain’s most enduringly successful sport in recent years, was in the doghouse when its technical director Shane Sutton resigned amid claims of sexism and discrimination towards elite cyclists, which he denied.

He had been suspended while British Cycling also investigated allegations of derogatory comments about Para-cyclists.

Then we had the Football Association's mis-handling of Sam Allardyce's appointment as England manager.

Of course there were several beacons of light to pierce the pervading gloom, not least the glories of Rio, notably among record-breaking Team GB, Andy Murray’s acquisition of his second Wimbledon and Olympic titles, Leicester City’s footballing fairytale and the triumphant run of the England rugby union team under new coach Eddie Jones.

But 2016, too, was a year in which sport sadly sport lost two of its greatest and most beloved practitioners, both supreme maestros of their respective arts, boxer Muhammad Ali and golfer Arnold Palmer. Two men who represented the very antithesis of what is going on in sport today.

Well that is the bad news. But as they say, things can only get better. Or can they?

As the New Year looms there is an intensely disquieting feeling that we may have seen only the tip of the iceberg of these incipient scandals - certainly in the case of football’s sex abusers. How many more cases will be exhumed - and not just historic ones?

There is a growing awareness that the cover-ups are continuing even now.

With the World Anti-Doping Agency and the International Olympic Committee currently in an uneasy truce, there are fears that full scale war may break out over doping in 2017. The year’s major focus will again be in London, hosts of the World Athletics Championships.

Will Russia have formally redeemed itself by then? If not, what will be the wrath of President Putin with the International Association of Athletics Federations?

And could there be consequences for his nation’s staging of football’s World Cup the following year?

Yet for me, one of the most worrying aspects of all is whether the fans (outside of the sex abuse allegations) give a tinker’s cuss about these unseemly goings-on.

Certainly the media does, but that is our job.

As an example, did you hear any boos for double cheat Justin Gatlin or any other "rehabilitated" druggies in Rio?

No more than there were at London 2012 when they jeered the Chancellor of the Exchequer but displayed little evidence of scorn for Gatlin and co.

Make of that what you will. But sport will not sort out its disorderly houses until the public shows it gives a toss and shows its condemnation.