What would Shankly make of Diniz?

WHEN A sky Sports reporter approached a young Everton fan in Liverpool city centre last Thursday and told him the news that manager Joe Royle had resigned it looked, for a moment, like we might get tears.

"He's left? Today? God," he said as his bottom lip began to quiver. But. "Who's gonna be the new manager then, do you know," he asked, chirpily.

While Royle might have been yesterday's man at Goodison Park, even before he'd cleared out his desk, the grieving period that followed the retirements and deaths of Matt Busby, Bill Shankly and Jock Stein lasted considerably longer in the cities of Manchester, Liverpool and Glasgow - but then the legacy they bestowed on their respective clubs was one of incalculable proportions.

The three managers were profiled, in a trilogy of programme's over the Easter weekend, by Hugh McIlvanney in The Football Men. For McIlvanney, chief sports writer with the Sunday Times, the project was, clearly, a labour of love coming, as he does, from the same background in the old mining communities south of Glasgow.

He was also a close, personal friend of all three men - in fact so close was his friendship with Busby that he was the only reporter allowed into Manchester United's dressing room immediately after the 1968 European Cup Final victory.

So anyone hoping for a few Busby in transfer bung shocker stories was going to be disappointed ... although we did learn that Shankly didn't just rely on his silver tongue to get his players prepared for matches.

"What he did was, before we played, he put 11 wee tablets down in front of us and if you didn't take your tablet you wouldn't have been playing next week," said one of Shankly's players, Hughie Cameron. "I don't know what they were but they gave you a buzz and after the game you felt you could go again."

Drugs scandals aside the most interesting aspect of McIlvanney's beautifully-assembled profile of the three men was the remarkable similarities in their backgrounds and outlooks on life - all three were born into mining families within a 20-mile radius south of Glasgow, and shared a lifelong commitment to socialism and a passion for football.

For all three too, it was a simple game, not a Christmas tree formation in sight. Shankly defined a manager as someone who "gets useful players, trains them the right way, gets them to do what they can do, they all help each other and he merges them all together - it's a form of socialism without the politics." If only Joe Royle, and most other managers in the history of the game, found it that simple.

Wonder what Shankly would have made of Pedro Diniz, the Brazilian Formula One driver whose background is just a teeny bit different to, that of the Anfield legend. No coal mines for Pedro, that's for sure.

All the same poor old Pedro gets dog's abuse from everyone in motor racing for being a `rentadriver'. His detractors' claim he's one of those people who puts on his left indicator before turning right and only got involved in Formula One because his billionaire Da helped buy him the number two seat in the Arrows team. These same people also point out that Pedro was lapped nine times in last year's Argentinian Grand Prix which, apparently, isn't good.

Well, having heard all this nastiness about Pedro we expected to find him in a deep, deep state of depression when we saw ITV's James Allen interview him on Saturday afternoon. And, yep, things looked rough for Pedro. There he was sunbathing on the veranda of one of his family's spectacularly gorgeous homes in Brazil, sipping cocktails, jetskiing (badly) on his own little lake while, at the same time, trying to come to terms with the awful fact that he is the heir to his father's £800 million supermarket fortune.

"Does it bother you that people think you're a rich guy who's bought his way in to Formula One," asked James. "I haven't a problem with people saying I'm rich - I think it's not a bad thing," he replied as he looked in to the camera and grinned. Fair play to ya Pedro, to hell with the begrudgers.

However, having been taken for a spin by ITV's Martin Brundle around the bumpy Brazilian track (potholes everywhere) on Saturday, with a "unique computer-simulated driver's-eye view of the track", Pedro's critics should vow never to chuckle at his driving difficulties again. "Sweeping curves ... double apex corners - it's an anti-clockwise circuit so it's tough on the left side of your neck," said Brundle. Tough on the contents of your stomach too. Bluuuurgh.

Jordan's Giancarlo Fisichella also seemed to have difficulties with the anti-clockwise nature of the course in the qualifying sessions because he ended up lodged in a pile of tyres at the side of the track. Afterwards James Allen had a chat with Giancarlo about the accident but the driver's attempts to explain what happened didn't impress Simon Taylor back in the studio.

"His English is not of the best," said a giggling Simon (how's your Italian then Simon?). Next to face Simon's English language exam was the second Jordan driver, Ralf Schumacher. "Tenth place - how ado you feel about that," asked Allen of the German. "Not so satisfied with that ... I didn't have a new set of tyres so we f***ed up." Is that, better, Simon?

Pigeon racing may have some way to go before it attracts the kind of money found in motor racing but it seems it's only a matter of time before these birds have Benson and Hedges, Benetton and Rothmans painted on their wings. Earlier this year a British breeder paid £100,000 for a feathered version of Donovan Bailey and one international race organiser is now offering prize money totalling £1 million.

But, inevitably, where there's money there's corruption. "Muscle-bound super pigeons are being bred on the continent," Sky News revealed on Saturday in a drugs in pigeon racing exclusive.

English pigeon fancier Bill Hay complained that his puny birds can no longer compete with their European cousins because (are you sitting down) many of them have steroids mixed in their water by their owners and are being given anabolic eye drops. "We're being cheated out of the rewards," complained a furious Bill, who called for random drug testing and three-year bans for cheating breeders.

Bill will be relieved to know that some laboratories are now testing pigeons for banned substances. Well, they're testing their droppings, so if they have any difficulty getting hold of some samples I can give them my freshly-washed white blouse that is covered in the bloody stuff. No charge, just return it without the dribble.