His Holiness Pope Francis seems like a good sport, and he certainly sounds as if he knows his stuff about playing the game. He also has a cute sense of timing.

His wise words to the President of the International Olympic Committee and members of the European Olympic Committees - among them the Lords Coe and Moynihan - gathered before him in the Vatican recently carry a certain resonance which sport should take as a yellow card.

Let us pray it gets this Papal message:

"When sport is viewed solely in economic terms or as the pursuit of victory at all cost, we run the risk of reducing athletes to mere products from which to profit. Athletes themselves enter into a system that sweeps them away; they can lose the true meaning of their activity, that joy of play which attracted them as young people and which drove them to make so many sacrifices to become champions. Sport is harmony, but if the immoderate pursuit of money and success takes over, this harmony can be lost."

His homily could not be more apt, coinciding with the latest allegations about the so-called Beautiful Game; match-fixing in the lower-echelons of English football.

Pope Francis met International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach last month and warned sport of the dangers of money ©IOC

It transpires that not content with efforts to rig games in most of the world's major leagues, and even World Cup qualifiers, the illegal betting gangs in Asia have turned their attention to what they perceive as a more susceptible target, English non-league football.

Arrests have been made in what is believed to be the biggest match-rigging scandal here for decades and interestingly two of the alleged culprits have Singaporean connections.

Singapore, it seems is the epicentre of the betting scams. There an illegal gambling cartel has been operating for years. The infamous Dan Tan is currently on trial for match fixing and out on bail. There is also another Singaporean bookie, Wilson Raj Perumal, who did some time in a Finnish jail and who is now believed to be in Budapest helping Hungarian authorities. He's said to be linked with one of the two men charged with match fixing in the UK.

Having worked in Singapore in the eighties, when sport was considered an irrelevance on an education-is-everything Government agenda - I am surprised is that such cynical law-breaking has been not ruthlessly stamped out.

Strange that in a place no bigger than the Isle of Wight and where the rules are draconian - Singapore's is a still literally a hang-'em-flog-'em doctrine - is that they have been unable to crack down on the hucksters who clearly proliferate in their society. We not talking about the odd dodgy flutter here, but serious corruption.

Singapore IOC member Ser Miang Ng has worked hard to promote sport in his country but his efforts are being undermined by it being the centre of match-fixing ©Getty Images

The man I feel most sorry for is Singapore's International Olympic Committee member Ser Miang Ng, who campaigned honourably, albeit unsuccessfully for the IOC Presidency and has done more than anyone to to elevate his tiny nation from a sporting wasteland to international credibility, hosting an historic IOC congress, the Youth Olympics and now staging, among other events, the best-run of all F1 Grands Prix.

He is surely embarrassed by the activities of those seedy compatriots who are making the Singapore Sting even more potent than the Singapore Sling.

Once all forms of gambling were prohibited in safe, sanitised, squeaky-clean Singapore

Now there are two Las Vegas-styled casinos and many betting shops on the island. Fair enough. Business is business. But surely there needs to be a tougher crackdown those who are responsible.

Interpol says the illegal gambling market is worth $500 billion (£308 billion/€368 billion) in Asia. And sport these days is one of the world's major sources of revenue.

To transpose an old Yorkshire adage, where there's brass, there's muck.

So is sport as bent as a boomerang?

Well, some of it certainly is. We have ample evidence of result-rigging in football, cricket and snooker. And don't get me started on horse racing.

I once crossed swords with the redoubtable Clare Balding who had termed boxing "dirty and corrupt". The phrase pots and kettles immediately sprang to mind. I have never seen a boxer throw a fight though I accept there have been some outrageous decisions which suggested certain judges had been nobbled - most notably in Olympic boxing before Dr C K Wu's deep clean operation.

But, dear Ms Balding, there are far more pulled horses in your questionable sport than pulled punches in boxing.

Horse racing presenter Clare Balding has criticised other sports for being "dirty" but not been prepared to acknowledge problems in her own ©Getty Images

Tennis is also easy to fix - you simply have to hit the ball into the net and I swear I saw that happen in a Grand Slam final some years ago before the sport became totally professional, and with prize money putting latter-day players beyond such temptation.

Yet Chris Eaton, once a top cop with Interpol,who has been involved in looking at World Cup qualifiers believed to be fixed, does not accept that big earners are not susceptible to bribes.

Loads-a-money Premier League stars may earn humongous salaries that you think would make them immune to the approach of the fixers but he points out there are ways and means of compromising even the wealthiest individuals.

"You can approach players on high incomes and trap them into personal betting debts, honeypots or many other ways to coerce them to get involved in fixing Games."

Might this technique even be used in the Olympics?

Indeed could, you actualluy fix an Olympic event? You bet you could - so to speak.

A false start in the 100 metres, for instance. Plenty would bet on that, and so easy to manipulate.

Former IOC President Jacques Rogge has, more than anyone, highlighted the dangers of match-fixing ©Getty Images

"Sport is in danger," Jacques Rogge warned before stepping down as IOC overlord. "We had a clear signal from Governments, Interpol and international federations that there is illegal betting that threatens the credibility of sport. It is a big problem in the entire world. There is no safe haven. Illegal gambling is now a greater scourge for world sport than doping. "

"It's even worse," he added in an interview earlier this year: "Imagine a team sport with one player being doped; that one player will not make the difference to the result.

"But if you have match rigging with the goalkeeper being paid off and jumping over the ball, it's the whole match that is lost. So the scale is far more important in terms of match manipulation."

There is no doubt that his successor Thomas Bach shares similar sentiments, then IOC having formed a commission to tackle illegal betting and match-fixing to ensure they do not become become issues in future Games.

But I fear they might. So far the Olympics have been largely unaffected by illegal betting or match-fixing although last year badminton came under fire at the London Games when women's doubles pairs from South Korea, China and Indonesia deliberately threw their matches in order to get a more favourable draw.

All four pairings were disqualified and banned.

Athletes and officials are forbidden from betting on the Olympics and the IOC has been co-operating with legal betting agencies in the past few Games to monitor betting patterns for any suspect or unusual wagers.

Irish sailor Peter O'Leary was investigated for illegal betting on the eve of London 2012
©Getty Images

The Irish sailor Peter O'Leary escaped with a warning after betting on a direct competitor to win at the 2008 Beijing Games. O'Leary had placed two bets worth a total of €300 (£249/$408) on a British boat to capture the gold in the Star class at odds of 12-1.

Hugh Robertson, until recently Britain's Sports Minister, with a portfolio which embraced the gambling industry, said the integrity of the Games could be shattered by the "enormous" threat of illegal gambling rings trying to fix results.

As for football, it can be no surprise it is the principal target for the fixers when it has so eagerly climbed into bed with the gambling business through so many sponsorship dealp deals with bookmaking concerns.. Half-a-dozen Premier League sides wear shirts featuring online betting outfits and the even the Football League now has a five-year deal as the Sky Bet Championship.

If nothing else it brings whole new meaning to the phrase fixed odds.

Wonder if the Pope does the pools?

Alan Hubbard is a sports columnist for the The Independent on Sunday and a former sports editor of The Observer. He has covered a total of 16 Summer and Winter Games, and 10 Commonwealth Games