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SPORT:Foul Play: What's Wrong with Sport By Joe Humphreys Icon Books, 271pp. £8.99A book that takes modern sport and fandom to task should generate arguments that last well beyond half time

ON THE FACE of it, there seems to be nothing wrong with sport. It's a multi-billion-euro industry. By word and deed (though definitely not by thought) it pervades the world's airwaves. Its top exponents possess iconic status. Its top brass are treated with as much seriousness as the statesmen and cultural ambassadors they like to think of themselves as. Its cultural significance, psychological influence and social value continue to be the subjects of many a treatise and seminar. And though, as is its way, television has distorted and exaggerated sport's place in the scheme of things, over the course of the past century sporting authorities themselves have not been shy in proclaiming the eirenic and therapeutic powers of their product, beginning with the global romance enshrined in the Olympic movement.