Sensation as Beeb exposes football's shiny-suit penchant

TV View: A quick look at the clock, only five minutes to go in the programme and we were still waiting for Panorama to "lift the lid on the ugly side of the beautiful game", as they'd promised us.

By morning, we assumed, there'd be at least 14 job vacancies in the Premiership. David O'Leary and Graeme Souness and Co, we imagined, were sitting at home polishing up their CVs.

By full-time, though, the lid hadn't budged; all they told us was that (a) football agents can be somewhat shady creatures (with a penchant for big jewellery, shiny suits and loadsa money), (b) big clubs covet smaller clubs' best youth players and often make naughty and not entirely above-aboard approaches for them, (c) football is not overflowing with ethics and stuff like that and though it can be called many things "squeaky clean" isn't one of them, (d) there's quite a lot of loot swilling around in football, and (e) it's quite possible that some folk in football get their paws on some of that loot in an iffy manner but we don't actually have any evidence to prove that.

Well . . . yes. Davo and Sounie put their CVs back in their filing cabinets and booked six months in the sun.

Other than that? Harry Redknapp was exposed to be a man who wouldn't say no to a luxury all-expenses-paid trips to the World Cup finals, which means we have a lot more in common with 'Arry than we ever thought.

And really, the only conclusively-provable-in-a-court-of-law fact we learnt about Sam Allardyce is that he has a son with a mouth considerably larger than his brain.

The central characters? Three shady agents. The central witnesses? Three dodgy agents. And therein may just have lain the problem.

When the programme's producer, Alex Miller, turned up on Newsnight - after Panorama had aired - a somewhat unimpressed Jeremy Paxman (you know that look on his face) asked him if the investigation had, in fact, rocked football to its foundations.

"Well," said Miller, "it has provided some useful evidence." In other words, "No."

The upshot of it all is that Big Sam has vowed never to speak to the BBC again, which might just hurt the camera-lovin' Bolton supremo more than it will the BBC, and might even sue them. As 'Arry might too.

All in all not the finest hour in the history of the BBC's flagship current-affairs programme.

Lord Stevens, though, might just unearth a little more in his transfer enquiries. Indeed, yesterday's News of the World revealed that Manchester United "will be sensationally dragged into the investigation".

That is good news for the Red Army; they might finally get an answer to the seemingly unanswerable transfer question: how could Michael Carrick have cost £18 million?

The Sky pay-per-view team asked no such questions on Saturday evening when they billed their evening game "little Reading" against "the giants of English football, Manchester United". Honestly, not since they started fielding Darren Fletcher, John O'Shea and/or Kieron Richardson in the same midfield have United been giants of anything.

Later that evening, on RTÉ 2, Eamon Dunphy doffed his cap to Ronaldo for his equalising goal, gushing, "Ronaldo is the classic modern brat. He's a brat of a person: no character, no resilience. He's flash; he'll always do it against the little teams."

"You don't like him, do you, Eamon?" said Johnny Giles.

Never mind all that. The biggest event in Irish sporting history took place over the weekend, and not even the traffic mayhem could spoil it for the fans. The venue: Cusack Park, Ennis. Granted, it was only the biggest event in Irish sporting history if it says Roscommon on your birth cert, but not even the lads at The K Club celebrated like they did in Ennis.

Roscommon manager Fergal O'Donnell was emotional, but not half as emotional as Jim Carney. "It took me five hours to get here, Fergal," said Jim, fretting about the journey home.

The wonder was that RTÉ had anyone left to send to Ennis; most of the company seemed to be Kildare-based the last few days. Don't know, there must have been something on there.

The highlight of the weekend? Apart from Roscommon's triumph it would have been, for the green-and-white hooped contingent, Celtic's Old Firm win. Flowing, exhilarating football, in no sense at all.

Rangers' defence wasn't exactly watertight, we felt, even with Karl Svensson on the bench. When he played for them in the Uefa Cup recently the BBC commentator noted, "Svensson was caught in two minds - and both of them were wrong."