With the first invitations just out, 25 speakers have already signed up to speak at Play the Game 2009 in Coventry. The list includes some of the world's leading sports journalists, authors, academics, businessmen and administrators, for instance IOC member and former WADA president Richard W. Pound, WADA Director General David Howman, sports economist Wladimir Andreff and online betting agency Betfair's managing director, Mark Davies.

Play the Game and our conference partners call upon leading stakeholders in sport to contribute with your expertise and experience to this unique and independent forum for sports debate, so we together can produce creative thinking for a sports world in change.

A taped conversation implies that FIFA and UEFA Vice President and President of the Royal Spanish Football Association (RFEF) Àngel María Villar, was aware of match fixing in Spanish Primera División.

Did the Summer Olympics 2008 bring China and the rest of the world closer together? Is there a cure to match fixing in sport? How can sport work to serve peace and reconciliation? Can Interpol stop the growing illegal doping trade? Who were the sports leaders that received 138 million Swiss Francs handed out as bribes throughout the 90s? And why is the youth turning its back on sport?

After the publication of Girl Unprotected, Laura Robinson was contacted by a woman who led her attention to yet another Canadian hockey scandal. In this article, first published in The Globe and Mail, Laura Robinson reveals how a Canadian girl's hockey team has hired a convicted felon, guilty of sexual assault amongst other things, as its new coach.

Greedy agents, bungling with contracts, allegations of kidnapping and threats of life: all ingredients in a drama from real life, in the middle of which stands the now 21 year old Nigerian football player John Obi Mikel. He is the main character in one of the most intricate cases of transfer of players in International football history, and his travel from Nigeria to Chelsea is described in a new book, Den Forsvunne Diamanten (“The lost Diamond”) by Norwegian Journalists Lars Backe Madsen and Jens M. Johansson.

China’s Olympic Games performance took the world by storm, but it gets mixed reviews in a report issued today on official treatment of overseas journalists and media covering the Games.

A formal cooperation between WADA and Interpol was announced at the WADA Executive Committee meeting in Montreal this weekend. The French government has appointed an officer to work as a liaison between the two organisations.