Saints legend Claus Lundekvam has claimed he, his teammates and opposition captains were involved in widespread spot fixing.

In an interview with a Norwegian TV channel, as part of a look at a match fixing scandal rocking the game in his home country, the former St Mary’s captain revealed dubious betting habits during his time with Saints.

Though he insists there was never any attempt to fix results, he admits players pooled large amounts of money and gave it to club staff to lay bets on things such as who would win the first corner, the first throw-in and yellow cards.

Lundekvam, who made over 400 appearances for Saints in a 12 year stay at the club, said: “It’s not something I’m proud of.

“For a while we did this almost every week. We made a fair bit of money.

“The results were never on the agenda. That is something I would never have done. We were professional competitors.

“We could make deals with the opposing captain about, for example, betting on the first throw, the first corner, who started with the ball, a yellow card or a penalty.

“Those were the sorts of thing we had influence over.”

He added: “Even though what we did, of course, was illegal, it was just a fun thing.

“I know it happened at other clubs as well. We footballers live in a bubble.”

“It was part of the lifestyle and the excitement. Whatever we could bet on, we bet on.”

It is not the first time this sort of thing has been raised in relation to Saints as Matt Le Tissier revealed in his autobiography an incident in a game against Wimbledon in 1995 when he tried to put the ball into touch in the first minute to make money, only for it be inadvertently foiled.

However, Le Tissier insisted this was a one-off.

This morning the club’s greatest ever player took to Twitter to confirm that he had no knowledge of the widespread betting scams that Lundekvam has claimed.

He wrote: “aside from the 1incident mentioned in my book ive never been involved in any betting scams and had no idea of claus lundekvams claims.”