Robbie Keane on Late Late Show Tonight

[CollegeTillIDie]

Robbie Keane has not scored a goal against decent opposition since the World Cup in 2002. You could say his failure, and other senior players to perform adequately in competitive international games, has contributed to not 1 but 2 international managers losing their jobs ( McCarthy and Kerr so far) and may well contribute to a 3rd one ( Staunton). The fact remains we have not qualified for EURO 2004, World Cup 2006 and now EURO 2008. Keane's career is disappearing with the sands of time, and he faces the real prospect of not making the World Cup 2010 into the bargain. What ****es people off is the highly paid players like him, do not seem to be bothered about that. Something that the generation of players which included Moran, McCarthy, McGrath and the previous R.Keane could never have been accused of .... lacking passion and the desire to play at EURO championships, World Cups etc.

All the Irish fans want is for the team to be organised and competitive and be in with a shout. Mick McCarthy was unlucky losing in 2 qualification play-offs for major tournaments. It was only in the EURO 2004 qualifiers where the team were abject in two consecutive away games that people were losing patience with McCarthy, because for the first time we seemed incapable of defending properly ( take a bow John O'Shea).
Kerr's team came 4th in the group for the World Cup and Stan's team may do even worse than that.

[kingdom hoop]

:o Sorry for last nights posts there lads, clearly the three Smirnoff Ices really went to my head. (Unless ye thought they were brilliant, in which case I'll take a bow, and then ring the asylum to take ye away.)


I wouldn't lay much fault at Robbie's door, he's captain and must carry his duties as such.

What I was thinking of there was his defence of Staunton rather than his poke at the media. What I'm thinking now is that the interview glaringly showed up Keane's unsuitability as captain. But I suppose we knew that for a while, but last night was the final damning indictment.

It's pretty pointless being annoyed at Pat Kenny (it's just so hard not to be though), instead it would be better to analyse the interview as a means of revealing the mindsets of our players. Sh!t, I have to leave right now though. :eek:

[Beavis]

I do agree with him that the media has deteriorated in this country over the last few years (see today's Indo or Herald for example). The criticism has become personalised and abusive rather than analytical. It is reminiscent of the Sun or the Mirror hounding Robson, Taylor, Hoddle et al. I always thought we were better than that.

Staunton isn't doing the job, Robbie isn't playing as well as he can but they are not setting out to underachieve. They don't deserve the level of abuse they have received in recent weeks..... nobody does (other than serial killers, sex offenders and politicians)

Exact sentiments I expressed on another thread. I remember thinking when Beckham was personally dismembered after his WC 98 sending off and booed all over England for the following season, how can he ever have empathy with the fickle fans again I why should he even bother.

It's dissapointing to see irish footballing society has reached the same level, I feel we could go from being relative over-achievers int he past(country of only 4m and only the 3rd largest sport) to perenniel under-achievers like England, as the pressure to succeed and castigation if you fail will become too much for players and management.

[pete]

Hilarious interview, hard to know where to start.

The media have been on the back of Delaney, Staunton & captain Robbie Keane. I don't remember much criticism directed at the new players. Staunton is being treated well considering the performances. Kerrs treatment was much nastier.

:rolleyes:

[NeilMcD]

Terrible interview for all concerned in my view. Silly idea going on, and he then got off lightly and Kenny should have asked him much more questions. He should have mentioned Brian Kerrs articles.

[soccerc]

An open letter to Robbie

http://www.chatsoccer.eu/blog/?p=43

[NeilMcD]

http://www.tribune.ie/article.tvt?_scope=Tribune/Sport/Soccer&id=79318&SUBCAT=Tribune/Sport&SUBCATNAME=Sport

[onceahoop]

Kerrs treatment was much nastier.:rolleyes:

Instigated by Delaney.

[Billsthoughts]

I think the interview might be worth a second look. I thought Robbie was very clear at the start that hew was not having a go at the fans - the media is where his issue lies. He said that the booing doesn't help the nerves of some of the younger players but that is pretty self-evident - of course, they are going to be under pressure going into that atmosphere.

Robbie clearly stated that he thought the nature of the media attention was more negative now. Robbie, McGeady, Douglas, O'Shea, Duffer, Carsley and others have all been abused through the papers at different stages over the last year. It's one thing to say they had a bad game but quite another to say that they are useless and shouldn't be in the squad.

His first comments in the interview were that he understood the fans' frustration and he didn't claim that the performances were any good. I heard several people on Wednesday night screaming at Robbie to f**k off and not come back - from where I was sitting he ran the length and breadth of the pitch but nothing came off for him. If anything, he is trying too hard and he needs to concentrate on just playing centre-forward. Take the captaincy off him - but for christ's sake he is still one of our best five players (Shay, Finnan, Dunne and a fit Duffer being the others).

have to say i agree totally with this....

[citizenerased]

the cheek of robbie keane...this was a joke interview none of the right questions were asked, kenny is useless

[CollegeTillIDie]

Pat Kenny knows nothing about Irish football. He follows ManUre.....

[macdermesser]

[QUOTE=Darco Ooragnak;795899]Didn`t manage to get it all..

cheers Darco for putting that up

I actually thought the crowd were quite patient on Wednesday .. and quite supportive too. There were boos when the team went off at half time, but actually cheers when the team came back out in the second half. And the boos came from a minority in the crowd .. personally don't see the point of booing .. it's only negative energy and not productive .. and creating an atmosphere where, as Robbie says, that young players are not going to look forward to coming over for the games. There were boos at the final whistle .. but they were quickly replaced by applause for the efforts. I think the media has exaggerated what actually happened at the two games in terms of crowd reaction .. but at the end of the day, I think the FAI should hold their hands up and admit that it has not come off .. if they had appointed Beenhaker (on the same money with Poland as Robson is with us) with Staunton as his assistant, with a view to taking over after 3 or 4 years then this might have all worked out. And to be fair, the average poster on this board could see this at the time, while the people charged with caring for Irish football, for whatever reason, failed to spot the bleedin obvious.

[PaulB]

Great Piece by Tom Humphries in the Times this morning, if anyone ahs a subscription, maybe they could throw it up.

Personally thought the interview was a joke, Robbie may as well have bene interviewed by Kermit the frog, no probing whatsoever.

[Dr. Ogba]

An open letter to Robbie

http://www.chatsoccer.eu/blog/?p=43

My sentiments exactly, thought the interview was an insult to all Irish fans...."sure we can't think for ourselves, the media told us to do it"

very ill-advised interview, I can respect the fact that he did come out to face the music and looked quite emotional but there is now a growing culture of deflecting the blame which is seeping down from the upper ranks of the FAI to the players now...

Just be a man, accept some of the blame that has rightly been attributed to you, vow to do better and you'll at least earn back a little bit of respect from the fans...

[BaZmO*]

Well I dunno, maybe I'm being overly cynical but.... Bobbie being wheeled out after the first Cyprus debacle, and then Robbie after the second.
And no sign of the Gaffer or Oscar Wilde??? Hmmm...

[NeilMcD]

m : Robbie Keane. Robbie Keane. You crazy, mixed-up kid. What were you thinking jetting across to lecture the confused peasantry on the insidious evils lurking within the media?

Lawdee. We can accept that the media's embarrassing failure to qualify the country for next summer's European Championship finals is something you might well take personally, Robbie. Still. That doesn't make you Marshall McLuhan.

And we can only imagine how deeply you must resent the fourth estate's tendency in recent years to score goals only against very poor teams. But your deconstruction of the media-celebrity-football matrix lacks clarity, Robbie.

Listen. We hacks may be the lowest form of life you can imagine, but we are at least a couple of evolutionary stages beyond being your publicists. If you ever give us a second glance you might notice how few of us actually wear cheerleaders' skirts and tassels while we work.

Jimmy Cannon, a crusty old sportswriter who didn't know how to pull a punch, used to say that sportswriting survives because of the guys who don't cheer. Sportswriting just about survives in this country and a lot of the time we do actually cheer. But, Robbie, we have nothing to be cheering about.

The cheering thing was a theme Jimmy Cannon felt strongly about.

"I don't want sportswriters being fans," he wrote about the baseball beat. "I want them to be the guys who neither love nor hate the sport and whose life is not wrapped up in the sport and who remember they are working newspapermen and not baseball people."

We've all done plenty of cheering for you, Robbie. In the good times maybe you mistook us for fans. That's the cheering that got you boot deals and endorsement contracts and made you a very wealthy young man.

There's been so much cheering done for you that it's just about possible to understand how you would mistake journalists for publicists and come to resent the sudden withdrawal of fondling and fawning when times go bad.

You know well how it worked. You once - amusingly, I thought - refused to attend a press conference because your agent hadn't been given final approval on an Evening Herald article. The article in question made you out to be a cross between Mother Teresa and Pele and was actually a puff piece arranged by your boot sponsors, whose name and logo figured prominently across the two pages.

Still, great and fearful was your sulky wrath.

You know how these things are. The same agent once responded to an interview request with you by inviting me to fly to England, where he would arrange a five-minute slot with you.

I genuinely thought he was joking, Robbie, but he said that, no, you were very busy being a footballer and all that. I could take it or leave it. So I left it.

We've done longer interviews since and they have been grand and whatever they provided for the newspaper those interviews gave you a chance to transmit some of your personality to the Irish soccer public; they gave the people who buy the boots and the tickets and the jerseys some idea of what kind of a fellow Robbie Keane is.

That is good for everyone when it comes to creating a bond between players and public. That sort of exposure has meant that in good times you are feted and in bad times generally, Robbie, you are forgiven. People feel they know Robbie Keane.

It's not so long ago, for instance - just two years, in fact - that in the run-up to a huge game against France your own preparations for that match involved a night of karaoke till the small hours in the local and then a prolonged occupation of Lillies Bordello till the early hours the following night.

Good luck to you, but before you lecture us about how we are all in the same boat and all want the same thing you might stop to think about how short-changed the paying punter felt. Same boat? Some of us seem to be rowing harder than some other people in the boat, Robbie.

One of the many failures of the regime presided over by your old friend "Stan" has been the whole media-relations thing. Back in the Mansion House when "Stan" was launched by John Delaney (who, we now realise, was doing so only because his wife and children were being held at gunpoint somewhere else) there was much brave talk from "Stan" and his Uncle Bobby about how the media were going to be co-opted into the deal and we'd all be just a part of Stevo's Army.

That was kind of off-putting right from the start - being patronised and told how we'd soon be all on the payroll working as shills in the brave new world. But we have seen regimes come and go and we shrugged and got on with it.

Of course it took one bad result for the shutters to come down and for the team and management to adopt a policy of speaking only through gritted teeth.

It's not really of any interest to the general peasantry how the media are treated by the Irish team, but it should be. The media are merely the instrument through which players communicate with the people who pay their wages and puff their egos.

It doesn't really matter if the team find us all to be a lowdown bunch of scurvy curs; the bigger picture is that if you want to communicate with the general public it is much easier to do it through expressing yourself reasonably in interviews than indulging in epic sulks or performing in a string of karaoke nights.

That's why when you wanted to get your pouty message across you decided to get your face onto the Late Late Show on Friday night.

Ah, Robbie. When you ban the media from setting foot in the team hotel, when your manager gets everybody to drive to Malahide and then gives 20-second press conferences the bulk of which are composed of silences, when players are pulled from one-on-one interviews at the last minute, when the team and officials sit at the front of the plane eating hot food while the common hackery look on starving - when all these things happen it's best that the team perform with a passion and an excellence that bowls us all over because there isn't going to be much goodwill left in the media.

And funny enough, there is going to be less goodwill left among a general public who feel not only that they don't know the current team but also that the side offer very little that can be identified with.

In that regard it was nothing short of hilarious to hear Steve Staunton respond to a question about the team's isolation from the public by stating that ye go for walks on the beach, and sometimes go to Malahide. Brilliant!

The media are not perfect. Sometimes criticisms are excessive. On the other hand, the rewards at your end are always excessive so it balances out.

All the media ask and the general public ask is that the team prepares as well as is humanly possible and gives the green jersey as much as is humanly possible.

Not speaking to the media is petulant and childish. Not because we are so charming that you are missing out on the chance to become better people just by mixing with us, but because you leave a vacuum to be filled.

On the day before the Germany match, for instance, the FAI nixed an interview this paper had arranged with Stephen Hunt, who was ineligible to play against Germany but was perfectly happy to be interviewed. So the space had to be filled with a critical piece about the current regime.

That's not ideal for anyone, but the space unfilled by the meagre harvest from sulky press conferences and nixed interviews always gets filled by analysis pieces and critiques, and without the need on the part of the media to maintain the lifeline of access the pieces get more and more robust.

Robbie, it wasn't actually the media who were booing you in Croke Park last week. It was the people who pay your wages. They felt they had been short-changed. And they were right.

And seeing you on the Late Late asserting that people booed because of what they read in the paper overestimates the power of the media and underestimates the intelligence of the fan.

We, fans and hacks, all have jobs to do, real worries and mortgages and pressures. You are our distraction. You live the life, you score the goals, you wear the green. We're sorry if you think that we have all let you down, but now you know how we've been feeling.

[shakermaker1982]

spot on article.

[youngirish]

Just watched that interview (thanks Darco Ooragnak for posting it) and have discovered from Robbie that the Irish media have brainwashed me like the Nazis pre 1945 into thinking Stan isn't good enough for the Ireland job. This surprised me to say the least since I haven't even lived in Ireland for 7 years and therefore haven't read any Irish newspaper or seen an Irish news show in that time. I never knew our media was so far reaching. Thinking about it now, yes I would have thought a 4-0 home loss to the Dutch, a 5-2 away loss to Cyprus, a 2-1 last minute away win to San Marino, a gutless performance away to the Czechs, and a 1-1 home draw with Cyrpus were good performances unless the herald had informed me otherwise.

Surprisingly Keane is even more of a whinger in real life than he appears to be on the pitch (is this possible?). Truly the best man to motivate the dressing room before a hostile away encounter. I remember all those times Roy Keane, Kenny Cunningham and Mick McCarthy were all crying about how tough any criticism was for the team when they were captains.

Forget about the deadful team selections and his tactical ineptitude I think Stan's worst mistake was appointing Robbie Keane as captain. This should have been a sign of things to come. Hopefully whoever gets appointed as our next manager will immediately rectify this mistake and give the armband to Dunne.

[Billsthoughts]

Bit of perspective lads. hes a footballer hitting a bad run of form not a mass murderer. I think Kenny asked some hard questions just didnt follow up on them but again he was interviewing a footballer not a politician. fair play to robbie for agreeing to do the interview in the first place and for showing a bit of loyalty(however misplaced) to his under fire manager. Everyone knows Stan is not the man for the job but we dont have mass recriminations. He is a bad manger sack him and replace him with a good one. Lets see what the players can produce then.
Only other thing is when he was talking about the player not wanting to come over I couldnt work out whether he was angry with the player or the media? anyone else on that?

[jbyrne]

Great Piece by Tom Humphries in the Times this morning, if anyone ahs a subscription, maybe they could throw it up.


think the recent reporting in the media has actually been very poor. most of the articles i read over the weekend, and then humphries today, are just the media concentrating on their relationship with the irish international team set-up and trying to defend their corner and having a good whinge about how the set-up has frustrated their ability to do their job. couldn’t care less about their relationship with the irish team. complete non-event of an issue that does not deserve all the coverage it gets. the real issue is our awful recent performances but our self serving hacks seem to think their position in the whole thing is actually the main event

[Billsthoughts]

think the recent reporting in the media has actually been very poor. most of the articles i read over the weekend, and then humphries today, are just the media concentrating on their relationship with the irish international team set-up and trying to defend their corner and having a good whinge about how the set-up has frustrated their ability to do their job. couldn’t care less about their relationship with the irish team. complete non-event of an issue that does not deserve all the coverage it gets. the real issue is our awful recent performances but our self serving hacks seem to think their position in the whole thing is actually the main event

well its a total event of an issue if you are on the one hand complaining about the media and on the other hand f*cking them over at every oppurtunity. bit of common sense by both the players and the media mite go a long way to getting rid of the nasty atmosphere that surrounds the irish football team now.

[RogerMilla]

pathetic stuff from keane.

The MEEDJA told us to do it.

Absolutly no respect for the fans who have followed him far and wide, either that or in an ivory tower so high and removed from reality that he actually beleives that his teams performances should be cheered on regardless of quality.

[citizenerased]

Robbie: don't blame the messenger
Tom Humphries

Locker Room : Robbie Keane. Robbie Keane. You crazy, mixed-up kid. What were you thinking jetting across to lecture the confused peasantry on the insidious evils lurking within the media?

Lawdee. We can accept that the media's embarrassing failure to qualify the country for next summer's European Championship finals is something you might well take personally, Robbie. Still. That doesn't make you Marshall McLuhan.

And we can only imagine how deeply you must resent the fourth estate's tendency in recent years to score goals only against very poor teams. But your deconstruction of the media-celebrity-football matrix lacks clarity, Robbie.

Listen. We hacks may be the lowest form of life you can imagine, but we are at least a couple of evolutionary stages beyond being your publicists. If you ever give us a second glance you might notice how few of us actually wear cheerleaders' skirts and tassels while we work.

Jimmy Cannon, a crusty old sportswriter who didn't know how to pull a punch, used to say that sportswriting survives because of the guys who don't cheer. Sportswriting just about survives in this country and a lot of the time we do actually cheer. But, Robbie, we have nothing to be cheering about.

The cheering thing was a theme Jimmy Cannon felt strongly about.

"I don't want sportswriters being fans," he wrote about the baseball beat. "I want them to be the guys who neither love nor hate the sport and whose life is not wrapped up in the sport and who remember they are working newspapermen and not baseball people."

We've all done plenty of cheering for you, Robbie. In the good times maybe you mistook us for fans. That's the cheering that got you boot deals and endorsement contracts and made you a very wealthy young man.

There's been so much cheering done for you that it's just about possible to understand how you would mistake journalists for publicists and come to resent the sudden withdrawal of fondling and fawning when times go bad.

You know well how it worked. You once - amusingly, I thought - refused to attend a press conference because your agent hadn't been given final approval on an Evening Herald article. The article in question made you out to be a cross between Mother Teresa and Pele and was actually a puff piece arranged by your boot sponsors, whose name and logo figured prominently across the two pages.

Still, great and fearful was your sulky wrath.

You know how these things are. The same agent once responded to an interview request with you by inviting me to fly to England, where he would arrange a five-minute slot with you.

I genuinely thought he was joking, Robbie, but he said that, no, you were very busy being a footballer and all that. I could take it or leave it. So I left it.

We've done longer interviews since and they have been grand and whatever they provided for the newspaper those interviews gave you a chance to transmit some of your personality to the Irish soccer public; they gave the people who buy the boots and the tickets and the jerseys some idea of what kind of a fellow Robbie Keane is.

That is good for everyone when it comes to creating a bond between players and public. That sort of exposure has meant that in good times you are feted and in bad times generally, Robbie, you are forgiven. People feel they know Robbie Keane.

It's not so long ago, for instance - just two years, in fact - that in the run-up to a huge game against France your own preparations for that match involved a night of karaoke till the small hours in the local and then a prolonged occupation of Lillies Bordello till the early hours the following night.

Good luck to you, but before you lecture us about how we are all in the same boat and all want the same thing you might stop to think about how short-changed the paying punter felt. Same boat? Some of us seem to be rowing harder than some other people in the boat, Robbie.

One of the many failures of the regime presided over by your old friend "Stan" has been the whole media-relations thing. Back in the Mansion House when "Stan" was launched by John Delaney (who, we now realise, was doing so only because his wife and children were being held at gunpoint somewhere else) there was much brave talk from "Stan" and his Uncle Bobby about how the media were going to be co-opted into the deal and we'd all be just a part of Stevo's Army.

That was kind of off-putting right from the start - being patronised and told how we'd soon be all on the payroll working as shills in the brave new world. But we have seen regimes come and go and we shrugged and got on with it.

Of course it took one bad result for the shutters to come down and for the team and management to adopt a policy of speaking only through gritted teeth.

It's not really of any interest to the general peasantry how the media are treated by the Irish team, but it should be. The media are merely the instrument through which players communicate with the people who pay their wages and puff their egos.

It doesn't really matter if the team find us all to be a lowdown bunch of scurvy curs; the bigger picture is that if you want to communicate with the general public it is much easier to do it through expressing yourself reasonably in interviews than indulging in epic sulks or performing in a string of karaoke nights.

That's why when you wanted to get your pouty message across you decided to get your face onto the Late Late Show on Friday night.

Ah, Robbie. When you ban the media from setting foot in the team hotel, when your manager gets everybody to drive to Malahide and then gives 20-second press conferences the bulk of which are composed of silences, when players are pulled from one-on-one interviews at the last minute, when the team and officials sit at the front of the plane eating hot food while the common hackery look on starving - when all these things happen it's best that the team perform with a passion and an excellence that bowls us all over because there isn't going to be much goodwill left in the media.

And funny enough, there is going to be less goodwill left among a general public who feel not only that they don't know the current team but also that the side offer very little that can be identified with.

In that regard it was nothing short of hilarious to hear Steve Staunton respond to a question about the team's isolation from the public by stating that ye go for walks on the beach, and sometimes go to Malahide. Brilliant!

The media are not perfect. Sometimes criticisms are excessive. On the other hand, the rewards at your end are always excessive so it balances out.

All the media ask and the general public ask is that the team prepares as well as is humanly possible and gives the green jersey as much as is humanly possible.

Not speaking to the media is petulant and childish. Not because we are so charming that you are missing out on the chance to become better people just by mixing with us, but because you leave a vacuum to be filled.

On the day before the Germany match, for instance, the FAI nixed an interview this paper had arranged with Stephen Hunt, who was ineligible to play against Germany but was perfectly happy to be interviewed. So the space had to be filled with a critical piece about the current regime.

That's not ideal for anyone, but the space unfilled by the meagre harvest from sulky press conferences and nixed interviews always gets filled by analysis pieces and critiques, and without the need on the part of the media to maintain the lifeline of access the pieces get more and more robust.

Robbie, it wasn't actually the media who were booing you in Croke Park last week. It was the people who pay your wages. They felt they had been short-changed. And they were right.

And seeing you on the Late Late asserting that people booed because of what they read in the paper overestimates the power of the media and underestimates the intelligence of the fan.

We, fans and hacks, all have jobs to do, real worries and mortgages and pressures. You are our distraction. You live the life, you score the goals, you wear the green. We're sorry if you think that we have all let you down, but now you know how we've been feeling.

© 2007 The Irish Times

[livehead1]

You don't honestly believe for one minute he is going to 'waste his time' reading this do you?

[Ozymandias]

robbie stated that his beef was with the media at the start of the interview...but then stated that the fans only booed as a result of the media reports...I find this insulting...I can make up my own mind..I didn't need papers to tell me that the performances in cyprus and san marino were rubbish...or even the win against wales was poor fair.... I didn't need the media to help me raise eyebrows to some of stans selections...or to question how someone can be excluded from the squad and then brought in as a late replacement and actually start the game......I pondered all this on my own because I actualy went to school and was educated to a certain standard that lets me make up my own mind......I see the media as a way the fans can get an insight into the players and management...they are the medium as we don't meet the players out as much anymore..which is ok.....but how dare Robbie Keane state that I as a fan that is demoralised by the current set up am reacting this way because of media reports....Robbie I am not a lemming and neither are the majority of the people that follow this team around europe knowing we aren't going to qualify for anything or even score more than one goal

[Noelys Guitar]

And will people please stop asking for the new manager to have an "Assistant" like Aldridge or Stan! Why would we want a manager who needs an "assistant" forced upon him. We want a manager who brings his own backroom people in. Who knows what hes doing from day one.

[Calcio Jack]

I used to enjoy a lot of TH articles, but IMO he has some nerve coming out and saying that Robbie Keane overestimtes the power of the media... if he doesn't believe that the media doesn't have the power to act as an influencer..then maybe he could explian as to why he every chance he gets distorts the facts in relation to how Thomas Davis/the GAA are trying to annexe Tallaght from Rovers. He tries on a regular basis to push trhe Thomas D agenda and now to hear him come accross and describe himself as being not just a reporter but also a fan of Irish soccer is pure twofacedness when you look at what he's written in relation to Tallaght. You can't have it both ways Tom

[Jerry The Saint]

Bit of a sulk from Humphries too ;)



when the team and officials sit at the front of the plane eating hot food while the common hackery look on starving

Clearly a sore point :D

In fairness, it's understandable - Robbie is the one who put the blame on the media so he feels he needs to defend his profession. As a bonus, it allows him to associate himself with the tradition of Great American Sportswriters which he is very fond of doing. He loses points for failing to mention the Dublin Minor Camogie team :)

[citizenerased]

he is right keane is a disgrace..good article

[fergalr]

He tries on a regular basis to push trhe Thomas D agenda and now to hear him come accross and describe himself as being not just a reporter but also a fan of Irish soccer is pure twofacedness when you look at what he's written in relation to Tallaght. You can't have it both ways Tom
Absolutely! This cannot be said often enough – this is a man with an agenda. He obviously loves his Dublin hurling and writes about it. He obvious despises football and writes about it (pretending to be an impartial observer).


Bit of a sulk from Humphries too ;)

Quote:
when the team and officials sit at the front of the plane eating hot food while the common hackery look on starving

Clearly a sore point :D

Well spotted. For all the guff in the article it turns out that his main gripe is his big rumbling belly.



Surprisingly Keane is even more of a whinger in real life than he appears to be on the pitch (is this possible?).
But to get back on topic - this sums up the man and why he should never have been given the captaincy.

[Ireland4ever]

I hope to F*ck that the new manager takes the captaincy off Robbie. What kind of example is he setting for the rest of the team. Could you imagine any of our previous players coming onto the Late Late and complaining about the media and accepting none of the blame themselves...hell no!!....Robbie failed to aknowledge that he has been utterly pathetic for ireland for many a year now.....After the Cyprus match Stephen Hunt came out and apologised for his peformance and stated that he was emabarassed with his showing...Proper order, its a pity our captain could not follow that example.

[citizenerased]

I hope to F*ck that the new manager takes the captaincy off Robbie. What kind of example is he setting for the rest of the team. Could you imagine any of our previous players coming onto the Late Late and complaining about the media and accepting none of the blame themselves...hell no!!....Robbie failed to aknowledge that he has been utterly pathetic for ireland for many a year now.....After the Cyprus match Stephen Hunt came out and apologised for his peformance and stated that he was emabarassed with his showing...Proper order, its a pity our captain could not follow that example.

i agree I4E, hunt was right having a go at stevie ireland aswell...Keane is a whinging little pre-madonna, stans mate...does anyone else find it strange that the players call the manager by his nickname 'Stan', this emphasises the lack of true respect for him in the irish camp...

[geysir]

Smells of the 'give the 2 fingers to the booing abusive fans and they go squealing, oh how dare he do that, we are soooo offended.'
Give the 2 fingers to abusive media and they all circle the wagons.
"the FAI nixed an interview this paper had arranged ...... So the space had to be filled with a critical piece about the current regime."
Gimmie a break from that heap of sanctamonius sh'íte.
Why can it not be accepted that some obvious reporting goes way over the top, why did Robbie have to answer a stupid thick question about Stan's team talk. That feckin journalist is the one who should be grilled alive in public.

Amongst the things that I could make out from the verbally challenged Robbie,
'of course I missed sitters, I am the only one who takes responsibility for that, I have to face up that and look myself in the mirror, I should have done better'.
'We as players have to look at our role and say we were not good enough'.

The media hatchet jobs has an effect on the younger players, he repeated this many times. He repeatedly referred to the younger players. He said 'the older players will be leaving in a few years and worries about who is going to want to play for Ireland.'
'We have to stick together as a unit as a nation'.

Take it or leave it, a footballer has opened his mouth and words were heard, some words make sense others are nonsense.
I have no problem bearing with Robbie through this famine and hope he starts scoring goals.
If there is somebody else who has a better chance of scoring goals then so be it?

[youngirish]

In fairness to Keane he has suffered as much as any of the players IMO during the current regime. Stan's tactical naivety has been evident as much in anything as in our inability to create decent chances from the midfield particularly for a striker that's none too hot in the air.

Doyle has scored a few because of his strength and decent aerial ability but he's hardly been prolific either. Keane has none of the aforementioned qualities in his game and needs better ball to feet than he's become accustomed to under Stan and to a lesser extent Kerr before him.

[carloz]

The questions that the three members in the Late Late show audience asked was embaressing. I was hoping when they went to the crowd we would get some tough questions but no, instead we get more Irish stupidity and the lick arse mentality of some

[carloz]

Doyle has scored a few because of his strength and decent aerial ability but he's hardly been prolific either. Keane has none of the aforementioned qualities in his game and needs better ball to feet than he's become accustomed to under Stan and to a lesser extent Kerr before him.
I agree with you certainly but Doyle scored two massive gaoals for us against Slovakia. Keane got the all important 3rd, 4th and 5th home goals against San marino:rolleyes:

[fergalr]

From the fresh-off-the presses of the Guardian's Fiver:

SUNSHINE! MOONLIGHT! GOOD TIMES! MEDIA!

The Late Late Show is a weekly chat show that's been running on Irish television for over 352 years. It is hosted by what appears to be a cardboard cut-out named Pat Kenny, who plumbs depths of obsequiousness that make even the sycophantic Michael Parkinson look like a member of the Spanish Inquisition. Last Friday night, it was the turn of Robbie Keane to chew the fat with Kenny. As is customary when Ireland's record goalscorer finds himself in a one-on-one, he failed to hit the target.

"The media are trying to get the fans against us," he whined, simultaneously crediting his team's long-suffering fans with very little intelligence and suggesting it's somehow the Fiver's fault that he's firing more blanks than Boycie from Only Fools and Horses. And while we struggled to recall which of our press-box colleagues was responsible for appointing Stan "Steve" Staunton as Ireland's manager, or how many hacks from The Theme-Pub Times played in green when Cyprus walloped Ireland 5-2, Keane continued his rant. "I'm worried about the next generation of young players coming through and the desire they have to come over to play for Ireland. From the minute they come over on the Tuesday to the game on Saturday, they're getting hammered and that can't be good for Irish football."

That's getting "hammered" by the media, as opposed to Robbie's forte: getting "hammered" in Dublin nightclubs during the build-up to a very important match against France. That probably can't be good for Irish football either, but as Robbie failed to mention it at the weekend, we can only assume the media were to blame for that too.

Staunton is expected to lose his job tomorrow when the FAI holds an emergency board meeting to figure out a way of blaming the weather, the media ... basically anyone but themselves for the disastrous appointment of a "world-class" boss whose management experience was restricted to handing out bibs for Paul Merson at Walsall. "I'm the boss. I'm the gaffer. At the end of the day what I say goes, the buck stops with me," said Staunton on his appointment. The buck shouldn't stop exclusively with him, but tomorrow it almost certainly will.

[geysir]

The sacred words of the heroic Paul Doyle, I'd take great pleasure in hanging him by the balls from the Davin Stand.

[Ireland4ever]

"I'm worried about the next generation of young players coming through and the desire they have to come over to play for Ireland. From the minute they come over on the Tuesday to the game on Saturday, they're getting hammered and that can't be good for Irish football."



This quote was by far and away the most bizarre from our verbally challeged captain. Since Stan has been in charge 99.99% of the media attention has been directed at him. The players imo have gotten off very lightly. The media have basically released the players from any blame because of the ineptitude of the manager. If anything Robbie, the media have been to easy on you and your team-mates.

[mattie]

I have a lot of sympathy for Robbie's case.

The media control the agenda of thought in modern society.

It's how the likes of George Bush and Silvio Berlusconi get elected.

Half of the print media in Ireland (including especially Tom Humphries and Eamonn Dunphy) have bigger heads than John Delany.

Fewer people can think for themselves these days and just regurgitate whatever they read in the paper.

Then when you ask them to back it up they look at you cross-eyed.

[NeilMcD]

I have a lot of sympathy for Robbie's case.

The media control the agenda of thought in modern society.

It's how the likes of George Bush and Silvio Berlusconi get elected.

Half of the print media in Ireland (including especially Tom Humphries and Eamonn Dunphy) have bigger heads than John Delany.

Fewer people can think for themselves these days and just regurgitate whatever they read in the paper.

Then when you ask them to back it up they look at you cross-eyed.

So if the media are all consuming how didyou have the brain power and independence to be critical of them.

[Ireland4ever]

I have a lot of sympathy for Robbie's case.

The media control the agenda of thought in modern society.

It's how the likes of George Bush and Silvio Berlusconi get elected.

Half of the print media in Ireland (including especially Tom Humphries and Eamonn Dunphy) have bigger heads than John Delany.

Fewer people can think for themselves these days and just regurgitate whatever they read in the paper.

Then when you ask them to back it up they look at you cross-eyed.


I agree to a certain extent but there are some things that not even the media could hide. Like the fact that Ireland & Robbie Keane have been utterly appalling for the last number of years.

[mattie]

The same brain power I had not to make blanket-statements like all-consuming;)

I said fewer people.

I'm not saying we're all robots but these guys are trying and succeeding to influence information more than providing it which is their job.

[NeilMcD]

But again I will ask how do you have the power to resist the power of the media but others dont.

[fergalr]

Half of the print media in Ireland (including especially Tom Humphries and Eamonn Dunphy) have bigger heads than John Delany.

Not sure about that. Perhaps Dunphy has a bigger mouth and Humphries has a bigger belly.

[geysir]

If you had the power you wouldn't need to ask.
Are you looking for some lessons Neil?

[mattie]

I know what you are saying,

I'm not trying to say i'm a high and mighty being,

but some people are a lot better at recognising bias, and recognising the difference between an argument based on evidence and one based on opinion.

The media should also be equally open to critiscism as anyone.

Whenever any section of the media gets criticized, they all gang together and vilify the perpetrator. They are a dictatorship in themselves at times.

[NeilMcD]

I did a masters in Media studies and the one thing I learnt from it was that never underestimate the power of the individual to make up his/her own mind and also never over estimate the power of the media to influence said individuals mind or opinion.

[youngirish]

I did a masters in Media studies?

Why?

[mattie]

Fair enough.

Here is a quote from Al Gore about the campaign he ran the first time he ran for the Senate

"my campaign advisors made a recommendation and prediction that surprised me with its specifity: 'If you run this ad at this many points [a measure of the size of advertising buy], and if Ashe (opponent) responds as we anticipate, and then we purchase this many points to air our response to his response, the net result after three weeks will be an increase of 8.5% in your lead in the polls.'
I authorized the plan and was astonished when three weeks later my lead had increased by exactly 8.5%"

If people can always think for themselves how does advertising make them buy things they don't need.

Obviously its not black and white and certain people are influenced more than others, but maybe you should ask someone with a masters in marketing what they think.