Rupert Murdoch continues to eat into the house of sport like a bad dose of rot. On the outside the edifice is attractive and moneycleaned. On the inside the entire business is fragile and decaying. Most depressing of all is the thought that the situation is virtually hopeless.

It was disclosed yesterday that Rupert wishes to digest Manchester United as part of his latest vertical integration scheme. The mere thought of it should be sufficient to induce nausea in anybody who cares for soccer.

The Manchester United move mirrors the latest elements of Murdoch's strategy in the United States and elsewhere, the realisation (duh!) that fans are more interested in watching their own team play scrabble than watching a big match between any two other teams.

In other words Fox Sports, unable to quite snuff out ESPN as a national channel in the US, have figured out that the money lies in becoming a regionally-oriented national channel. With the arrival of digital television the economies of scale and the technology now exist to make this possible.

You don't buy the big rights package, the whole enchilada and then broadcast one game on Sunday and one game on Monday as Sky Sports does right now. You buy the rights and show Liverpool's game in any house that wants it and Manchester United's game in any house that wants it and so on and so on.

Owning the team with the biggest market is a way of making sure that you don't lose those local rights when they become available.

So when Manchester United are bound into stories not just about their own television channel (see the Sunday Times just a few weeks ago) but also the establishment of a European Super League the obvious step for Rupert Murdoch to take is to buy the club.

By doing so he would distort the market and his influence on it grotesquely but can he be stopped?

The response of football will be necessarily feeble. Faced with the prospect of a European Super League they responded to the effect that players who play in the Super League won't be allowed to play for England. Phew! Denying multi-millionaires access to the faith healer is really going to make a few of them think twice is it? Anyway what happens when Sky Sports announce the creation of their own England team?

Before that happens, though, Manchester United are the rosiest apple to pluck from the laden tree. Manchester is a massive domestic market, (the other club in the area were kidnapped by aliens some years ago so there is a clear run locally), and also enjoy considerable potential for the sale of international rights to their games. All this mirrors the situation in Los Angeles.

At present Murdoch owns the rights to all professional sport in the Los Angeles area, the second biggest market in the US. Charles Dolan owns the rights to virtually all the professional sports in New York, the biggest market in the US. Both men have sought to establish the sort of vertical integration which the Manchester United move involves.

Murdoch has purchased the fabled Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team. Dolan's cablevision company owns, for instance, Madison Square Garden, the teams that play in it (New York Knicks in basketball, New York Rangers in ice hockey) and the rights to those teams. It also owns the rights to the Yankees (baseball), the New Jersey Nets (basketball) the New York Mets (baseball) plus the Devils and the Islanders ice hockey outfits.

This integration places the owning company in a position to abuse the well-being not just of fans but of other owners. In America Murdoch's influence on baseball has grown exponentially since his initial forays. Fox owns the national rights to baseball. The clubs own the local rights, but since becoming involved in the sport Fox has now acquired the local rights from a majority of the teams. In other words Rupert as the paymaster general is also in a monopoly position whereby he can juggle the incomes of other teams ensuring that in the biggest market still available to him (Los Angeles) the Dodgers can remain a competitive cash cow.

Eventually, and we must resign ourselves to this fact, sport will all but disappear off free television. If you want your kid to have heroes you will have to shell to the godfather every month. If you want share the fantasy you will first have to deal with a little man who says "Show me the Money".

You want to argue?

Well, in 1994 Murdoch suddenly wanted the rights to rugby league in Australia but the Australian Rugby League already had a pay TV contract with Kerry Packer. Quaintly, they said, "thanks but no thanks". Murdoch staged a raid offering huge bonuses and multiples of current deals to players to switch to his own "SuperLeague".

He was later castigated by a judge for his "secrecy, suddenness and deception" in acts aimed at leaving the ARL defenceless. By then it was too late.

In golf he attempted something similar (with Greg Norman as the willing stooge) when he sought to set up a World Tour.

In the meantime, we are to be treated as simple-minded buffoons. We will tolerate brassnecked drug cheats and the pop-eyed greed of modern sportspeople, and all manner of artificially-concocted excitement.

Baseball is a subsidiary now. The Chicago Tribune company, Disney, Time Warner and, more than anyone, Rupert Murdoch, all move pawns about the board. Manchester United are about to become a subsidiary also, the Red Devils digits in Rupert's profit and loss accounts.

So while Murdoch keeps "taking the world by satellite" using sports as a "battering ram" in the markets, we wait for those who run sports to recognise that they do so as a form of public trust arrangement. They don't own sports. They are tenants and they should stop acting like landlords.

In Ireland we are lucky we have something left.

I was in Semple Stadium eight days ago for the best sporting event of the year, anywhere. The confines were dowdy, the game only took place because of Jimmy Cooney's error, the sun was fitful and the place was stuffed.

Yet all that honest passion and furious beauty was something which should have reminded us all of what we are losing when we buy into the soulless world of Rupert Murdoch and the invertebrates who run sport on his behalf. Clare and Offaly connected with us in a visceral, honest way. We identified with them in a way that we can no longer identify with the bonus-fattened egos of professional sport.

In hard times, much thanks for that.