[1] In late 1962, Gauld approached Sheffield Wednesday player David Layne, a former team mate at Swindon, to identify a target game.
In an interview with The Times newspaper in July 2006, Peter Swan said "We lost the game fair and square, but I still don't know what I'd have done if we'd been winning.
The following year, Gauld's betting syndicate tried to fix the result of a match played on 20 April 1963 between Bradford Park Avenue and Bristol Rovers; consequently, two Bristol Rovers players – goalkeeper Esmond Million and inside-forward Keith Williams – were named in the Sunday People as having taken bribes to "throw" the match, which had ended in a 2–2 draw.
[citation needed] In 1964, Gauld, in search of a final "payday" after being discovered by the Sunday People, sold his story to the same newspaper for £7,000 (equivalent to £179,000 in 2023), incriminating the three Sheffield Wednesday players who had "thrown" the game against Ipswich Town in December 1962.
At the end of the trial on 26 January 1965, Gauld – described by the judge as the "central figure" of the case – received the heaviest sentence of four years in prison.
Brian Phillips successfully appealed against his ban and would lead Notts Alliance amateur side Rainworth Miners Welfare to the final of the FA Vase in 1982 as their manager.
Swan later transferred to Bury and then became player-manager at Matlock Town where he led the team to victory in the 1975 FA Trophy final.
Swan resigned at the end of his second season in charge of Matlock Town, hoping to find a full-time management position elsewhere.
He eventually returned as manager in November 1980, with his second spell at the club lasting just over a year after a poor run of results.
Sammy Chapman also returned to football, first with Portsmouth and Crewe Alexandra as a coach and then with Wolverhampton Wanderers as chief scout and then manager.
[9] The scandal was dramatised in 1997 in a BBC film The Fix, directed by Paul Greengrass and starring Jason Isaacs as Tony Kay, Christopher Fulford as Jimmy Gauld and Steve Coogan as Sunday People journalist Michael Gabbert, whose investigative work led to the uncovering of the scandal.