In the latest scandal to hit professional football in the city state, Lutz Pfannenstiel was jailed for accepting bribes to influence the outcome of games played last June and July by Geylang United Football Club.

'Compared to the other sentence meted out in similar cases, the sentence I would say is not too drastic,' said Pfannenstiel's lawyer SS Dhillon, adding that the player could be freed in three and a half months on good behaviour.

Pfannenstiel, 27, was facing a possible maximum sentence of up to 15 years in jail and S$300,000 ($173,000) in fines.

The former goalkeeper had shorn off his trademark waist-long pony tail for the hearing and was visibly nervous as he sat in the dock clutching a wooden rosary. He was led off to jail after the sentence was passed.

Singapore's five-year-old S-League has been plagued by allegations of corruption, prompting local football authorities to introduce lie detector tests for players.

The prosecution said Pfannenstiel accepted an offer by another man to raise three sums of between S$5,000 and S$7,000 to bet on the matches on the keeper's behalf.

In one case, it said, Lutz asked the man to bet S$5,000 for him and another $5,000 for his flatmate Mirko Jurilj that the match would end in a draw. The score was 2-2.

Jurilj, a 26-year-old Australian who played for Sembawang Rangers Football Club, was jailed in December for five months on three similar charges.

Chris Chan, the S-League's chief executive, said the league and the Football Association of Singapore (FAS) treated corruption cases with the utmost seriousness and had won an endorsement from football's world governing body.

'FIFA has written to applaud us for our activities to stamp out match-fixing,' Chan said. 'We asked them on their opinion about the polygraph testing... and they said maybe other countries should follow us.'

One goal of the clampdown is to win back betting dollars. Legalised football gambling raked in S$200 million in bets when it was introduced in Singapore in 1999, but revenues dropped by an estimated 25-30 percent last year as punters grew disillusioned by the scandals.

In 1999, a Croatian belonging to a local team was attacked by a bookie with a hockey stick the day before a match. The bookie was sentenced to 16 months in jail.