It has been an exhilarating, almost magical, British summer of sport, one to lift the heart as well as hopes for the future.

There is barely a sport which since the 2012 Olympics has not upped its game. Especially this year.

Examine the British results not only in the golden after-glow of Glasgow's  memorable Commonwealth Games which saw England on top of the medals table and hosts Scotland rejoicing in their greatest-ever haul, but the numerous UK successes in both the European athletics and swimming championships, as well as International Paralympic Committee European athletics championships.

So many sports, from athletics through to triathlon and taekwondo, have picked up the baton after 2012. Especially gymnastics, which, far from taking a Tumble (save in the ho-hum current Saturday night TV reality show of that name) has come on in leaps and bounds.

One of the features of the Commonwealth Games, it has unearthed new home-brewed stars, such as quadruple gold medallist Claudia Fragapane, now high among the world's finest with her flamboyant  locks, twists, wriggles, vaults and somersaults.

Giarnni Regini-Moran is among the rising stars of British sport, having won five medals at Nanjing 2014 ©Nanjing 2014



Plus her fellow 16-year-old Giarnni Regini-Moran, who scooped five medals in the Youth Olympics in Nanjing last week - another event that saw young Brits soaring to success.

On the pro side we had prolific Ulsterman Rory McIlroy's Open golf victory, while even England's maligned cricketers finally got their act - and heads - together to resoundingly thump India in the Test series.

There was that blockbuster fight night at Wembley with the knock-out

domestic return between Carl Froch and George Groves drawing a record-breaking 80,0000 crowd, while Sheffield's Kell Brook has just pulled off what had seemed a mission impossible by beating world welterweight champion Shawn Porter in his own US backyard.

England's redoubtable but unpaid lionesses, including a plumber, a vet, a lifeguard, several teachers and students, who all trained in their spare time, won rugby's women's World Cup and there was even an historic  triumph in fencing when Barnet's James Davis secured Britain's first-ever European foil gold.

All good stuff...but hang on a mo.

Along comes football, a game which can always be relied upon, to plummet the depths of the unsavoury, to spoil the party.

As if England's World Cup performance in Brazil was not woeful enough, the start of the Premier League season already has been blighted by one of the sleaziest scandals ever to hit the sport.

Allegations of racism, sexism, anti-Semitism and homophobia in a series of texts involving the former Cardiff City manager Malky Mackay and his then cohort Iain Moody have shockingly surfaced to further besmirch the game.

The texts between Malky Mackay and Iain Moody have done further damage to football ©Getty Images



Mackay was set to be appointed as Crystal Palace's manager last week-where Moody was already the sporting director, but the south London club abruptly shelved the move in the light of the allegations while Moody was forced to quit his role.

The scandal sent shockwaves through the football world after it emerged that Cardiff's ­Malaysian owner Vincent Tan had sent a dossier to the Football Association (FA) as part of a probe into Mackay and Moody.

The files included text slurs and allegations of transfer wrongdoings that blocked Mackay, 42, getting the job at Palace.

In one message Mr Tan was allegedly called a "chink", while an official at a different club was apparently referred to as "the homo".

Another exchange with a young player who has a female agent said: "I bet you'd love a bounce on her falsies."

And one concerning agent Phil Smith read: "Go on, fat Phil. Nothing like a Jew that sees money slipping through his fingers!!!''

The FA are said to be "investigating" these and other offensive missives including one which concerned the signing of Korean midfielder Kim Bo-kyung when Moody informed Mackay that "five of the b******s including the player are arriving for talks."

The reply was "Fkn chinkys" and a further message read: "Fk it. There's enough dogs in Cardiff to go round."

A football club official is referred to as "a gay snake" and a French player as "an independently-minded young homo." A[i]separate deal involving French players states: "Not many white faces among that lot."

The texts were apparently discovered after a dawn raid on the home of Moody by investigators hired by Tan to probe the controversial transfer worth £50 million made by the pair.

But if football looked to its leadership for immediate action, inevitably it was disappointed.

Premier League chief executive Richard Scudamore was embroiled in his own scandal earlier this year ©Getty Images



The Premier League and FA as usual sat on their hands, while the League Managers' Association (LMA) tried to sweep it all under the carpet with a shoulder-shrugging statement in which chief executive Richard Bevan described Mackay's texts as "friendly banter" and argued that at a time when he was under great pressure the manager was merely "letting off steam to a friend".

The LMA subsequently apologised after widespread criticism "for some of its wording".

It was hardly any wonder that Premier League chief executive Richard Scudamore's lips were sealed, because earlier this year the campaign groups Women in Football and the Women's Sport and Fitness Foundation said they were "surprised and disappointed" by the Premier League's own lack of action against its boss, who himself had been forced to apologise after it was revealed he had sent a series of sexist emails to a lawyer friend.

In the shared emails there were jokes about "gash" and "big-t****d broads" and "female irrationality".
FA chair Greg Dyke was told his by lawyers that the FA could take disciplinary action against all-powerful Scudamore but declined to do so.

Doubtless he recalled that it was not so long ago that the FA itself was   embroiled in a sex scandal of its own when the then England manager Sven Goran Eriksson and chief executive Mark Palios both had affairs with glamorous FA secretary Farah Alam.

Rani Abraham, the PA who exposed Scudamore's crude messages, maintains: "The Premier League is so powerful that the FA and other major figures in the game are scared of it.

"Football is run by dinosaurs at the top. The League Managers Association's response shows how out of touch it all is."

The murky Mackay affair has distinct echoes of that of Sky TV football presenters Richard Keys and Andy Gray who were heard on air making derogatory remarks about a female referee's assistant. When more sexist comments about female Sky personnel came to light, ex-Scottish football star Gray was sacked and Keys resigned.

Perhaps more significantly, Mackay should ponder the fate of Ron Atkinson, the former Manchester United manager whose copious media work came to an abrupt halt in April 2004, when he was forced to resign from ITV after he broadcast a racial remark live on air about the black Chelsea player Marcel Desailly believing the microphone was off.

He has not had a serious job in football since and in all probability, despite an abject public apology in which he denied being a racist or holding the sentiments expressed in the damning emails, Mackay will find he is similarly unemployable.

Except maybe in the Middle East where they tend to take a more lenient view of such prejudices, as Gray and Keys have since discovered.

Sports Minister Helen Grant has so far remained silent on a string of controversial issues ©Getty Images



This latest situation seems to have exposed English football's putrid underbelly, with many prejudices still endemic in a game which continues to live in the dark ages.

How many other managers, coaches and club officials are there who privately have made similarly sniggering comments but are fortunate enough not to have been caught out?

Allegations of racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia and other forms of discrimination reported to anti-discrimination body Kick It Out more than trebled last season to 284.

Which causes Kick it Out chairman Lord Ouseley to urge reform. "I think what we have got to recognise is that there is a serious problem out there about prejudice and bigotry...something has to be done."

I agree. We need action from the sports minister.

So far Helen Grant, appointed last October, has remained silent on controversial issues but this latest abomination surely demands some high-level comment, especially as one of the other hats she wears is that of equalities Minister.

I have some sympathy with Grant. Her popular predecessor Hugh Robertson, who invariably had a quotable view on contentious matters, and was getting to grips with obstinate football bedfire being moved on, has proved a hard act to follow.

Britain's first black sports Minister has trodden warily and seems to purposely have adopted a low profile approach to a role which the Government erroneously appears to consider of less significance now that 2012 is done and dusted.

She prefers digging away quietly at the grass roots of sport than mixing it with the big hitters and has genuine enthusiasm for issues such as greater participation by women and young people. When she took over she assured me "my door will always be open", yet some sports bodies complain she is hard to pin down.

For example, British Basketball's performance chief Roger Moreland says he requested a meeting with her in June to discuss government-backed UK Sport's withdrawal of funding, which has had a crippling effect on to the sport, and others similarly hit, but was told he must wait until October because of the summer recess, party conferences and her other Ministerial commitments, which also includes tourism.

Prime Minister David Cameron obviously has more pressing matters to deal with on his return from holiday but surely it is now time to make her position full-time.

Then perhaps she can give some urgent attention to delivering football, this money-saturated, ostrich-like, utterly shameless game the kicking it deserves.

Alan Hubbard is an award-winning sports columnist for The Independent on Sunday and a former sports editor of The Observer. He has covered a total of 16 Summer and Winter Games, 10 Commonwealth Games, several football World Cups and world title fights from Atlanta to Zaire.