One judge accused him of having 'unclean hands' while another said he had acted in 'flagrant breach of his legal and moral obligations'.

Grobbelaar had already won his case once against the Sun but an appeal court overturned the ruling in January last year.

However, on Thursday, law lords ruled the appeals court was wrong to overturn a jury verdict in the way it did.

They reinstated the original verdict while slashing Grobbelaar's initial award of £85,000 in damages to a symbolic figure of £1.

The question of who pays more than £1million in legal fees generated by the case has yet to be decided.

The five law lords were scathing of Grobbelaar, who won six English league titles with Liverpool in a colourful and glittering 13-year career.

Lord Bingham, who headed the panel, said the former Zimbabwean international had 'acted in a way in which no decent or honest footballer would act'.

Slashing the damages award, he said: 'It would be an affront to justice if a court of law were to award substantial damages to a man shown to have acted in such flagrant breach of his legal and moral obligations'.

Another member of the panel, Lord Steyn, described Grobbelaar as 'about as far away from being an applicant with clean hands as one can imagine'.

The law lords conceded that while Grobbelaar had accepted bribes, it had never been proved he had 'carried out his dishonest bargain' to throw matches.

The Sun first made its allegations of match-fixing in 1994, prompting a high-profile trial of Grobbelaar, former professional footballers Hans Segers and John Fashanu, and Asian businessman Richard Lim.