To me Roy Keane cost Ireland our only ever shot at a world cup final and has went on to reconfirm my opinion of him as nothing but a horrible person multiple times over, a stain on Ireland and Irish football.
There has been no catharsis on this topic. The only bit of that irish times article I liked was when they listened ogbene (aged 5) which is an old joke of the IT letters page when some effort was tagged with "joe Murphy (aged 7)."
Part of the problem is we are all still reeling from years of FAI mismanagement which to a degree proves Roy and Mick were massively undermined by a ****e organisation.
2 flawed individuals who missed an opportunity to come together on their best attributes instead they ended up clashing on their worst. Clearly they both tried over a long period to make it work and saipan was the long coming eruption.
We were all losers in this. Massive shame. I refuse though to cast out any individual because they failed to manage themselves perfectly. Football is professional but there's an added emotional aspect it and especially to international football.
What a time though.
From what I remember from the inquest into it (was that the Genesis report??) Keane had missed the testimonial against Sunderland for treatment on an injury. It was explained at the team meet up for the testimonial that the trip to Saipan was to recover from the season, and the actual preparation for the tournament would take place in Japan. If Keane had been at that meeting, if he had known that whatever facilities were used in Saipan would be temporary, maybe he'd have let it go.
There was a barbeque with journalists at the hotel as well, that he either didn't attend or only showed his face at, and was not impressed with the sick heads among the squad the next day.
At training, where Steve Finnan injured his ankle, there was a short game organised, but the goalkeepers had already gone through their warm down so didn't want to take part. Keane held a grudge against Shay Given for years because of this.
After the team meeting, and Keane went back to his room, some of the players knocked at the door and said they agreed with him, but they wanted to play at the World Cup. Can't remember who else was there, but one was definitely David Connolly, and he went on to sign for Keane at Sunderland.
Yeah, the first one, which Delaney said he'd implement in full or resign. He never did either.
Genesis II was into the LoI, and was an appallingly amateur effort which makes me wonder about Genesis I.
The Genesis Reporter then was a short-lived Ireland fanzine by a few guys here on foot.ie (Troy McClure the main person behind it as I recall, though a few others contributed, myself included)
Appropriately enough, the YBIG fanzine came on the scene at around the same time, which led to the split from foot to a new forum (YBIG.ie) as I recall. Maybe it's just our national character!
I was in school - must have been the end of second year I suppose? - when the news went round the classes like a wildfire, but it was very contrasting: he'd quit, he left of his own accord, he was already coming back. I remember thinking in the moment it must be a load of ******** because Keane wasn't going to give up what could have been his last chance to appear at a World Cup. The man was my hero, but when the whistle blew against Cameroon and it became impossible to act as if it could all be fixed that all ended. In a grander sense, that was my first real understanding of how messed up the whole FAI/senior side set-up could really be. It was like Nixon's Presidency, after that your whole view of the institution is tarnished.
Firmly in the McCarthy camp myself, and only more so as time has gone on and more stories about Keane's temperament and behaviour (for Ireland and his clubs) come out. Keane had legit gripes, but aired them the wrong way. McCarthy should have thought better at calling him out in front of the team, but Keane's response to that was ridiculous, and proof of both a lingering resentment that it feels like he'd been waiting to let loose on and a truly enormous ego. Given that he had famously told Alex Ferguson he was going to the World Cup to win it, his decision to leave still seems bizarre two decades on, and reflects very poorly on him in my opinion.
It's really hard to say how we would have got on with him in the team. People are saying we would have beaten Spain, then South Korea, but given the way the officiating went in the QF I have my doubts. A deeper question for me is if we could have beaten Cameroon and Germany with him in the team! Then it would have been Paraguay in the R16, then the US...who knows.
In the end no team is one man and Ireland did perfectly well without him, a few kicks of a ball away from a QF. But Keane was the very best player in what I would argue was probably our strongest squad ever, and it's still heartbreaking to think on what might have been.
Edit: I've also always thought it worth remembering that Keane was used to a set-up, through Manchester United, that was top tier for the game, which presumably always informed his thinking of the national side. That said, it's also worth remembering that Keane went into that post-season on the back of a very disappointing league campaign for United, their three-in-a-row streak ended by Arsenal at Old Trafford, and then finishing third behind Liverpool. I'd imagine he wasn't in the best of humour's anyway.
Last edited by NeverFeltBetter; 09/05/2022 at 10:05 AM.
Author of Never Felt Better (History, Film Reviews).
https://goo.gl/maps/xu3ja5nF68PEsRn67
Here's where Ireland were preparing their players for the World Cup.
I wonder did they upgrade the facilities after all the Ireland upheaval...
One of the lesser remembered repercussions of Saipan was bringing Delaney into the public eye for the first time. He was the highest ranking FAI official left in the country because everybody else was either in Japan, or Saipan, so he was the centre of every press conference held in Dublin
I think I may have a copy of the Genisis Reporter somewhere. It usually turns up when I'm looking for something else. IIRC, the YBIG fanzine had some support from the Star, and some of the pseudonyms in the "thanks" section were clearly reporters with the paper at the time
The original and best, and maybe sadly dying away over the years. So definitely the BDO!
Thinking again about whether we upped our game for the World Cup in general or specifically to rally around in adversity, and of course we lost our next two competitive games (against Switzerland and Russia), which saw McCarthy sacked. You wonder if that suggests we over-performed without Keane in 2002?
Last edited by pineapple stu; 09/05/2022 at 12:02 PM.
Certainly some players strove to fill the gap in those few weeks. There was a point to prove that Keane wasn't the be all and end all, and I remember people saying the draw with Germany was a justification for that viewpoint (though it should be remembered they were only four rankings places above us at the time).
Author of Never Felt Better (History, Film Reviews).
My mobile phone bill was colossal that month. Long before internet radio so I'd call my pals in Ireland daily at 6pm for the RTE news and would stay on the line for ages. I think the RTE website crashed a lot due to traffic.
I'll never forget the sheer excitement of the build up from end of season onwards but when Keane didn't show up for Quinn's testimonial it was obvious something was up. I was driving and heard it on 5 Live radio and I think from that moment on there was some doubt in everyone's minds about Keane's state of mind.
On the flawed-individuals comment - wasn't this chalk and cheese? McCarthy could on occasions be irasible but he came across generally as a decent, likeable man. No major issues. His players at club and international level (bar one!) seemed to like him whereas those at Sunderland and Ipswich apparently threw celebration parties when Keane departed. Indeed, Keane had myriad rows at all his clubs. He also pushed the envelop a bit with Jack. There's flawed and there's flawed.
I was already in Japan - I'd moved there about 6 months earlier, and had chosen Japan over S. Korea as Ireland's games would there (always nice to remind my wife of the importance of football in our family history when she laments me heading off to Dublin or Athlone or Cobh or wherever).
Mysteriously, the topic of football seemed to come up in a few of my classes, and it was students who told me about it as I was already in work when the story made the news (much less of a story in Japan than Ireland, obviously).
When we were knocked out by Spain a few weeks later, I had students coming up to me to commiserate as if a family member had died.
There was also the 1992 US Cup incident, don't forget, where McCarthy (as captain) challenged Keane for coming back drunk and after hours. Seems quite reasonable, but Keane's own account is that he told Mick to go **** himself that time too.
Fair bit about it here, from all three sides (Roy, Mick, and Niall Quinn as someone to provide the middle ground view)
Really good resource.
I'm surprised there hasn't been an effort to dramatise the whole affair. I Keano was good fun, but the whole thing is ripe for one of them "local dramas" RTE is plugging so much recently.
The Boston incident and how it appears Keane let what should really have been a once-off bit of unpleasantness turn into this decade-long grudge reminds me of something that was said in Drive To Survive, about how the best F1 drivers have to indulge their "inner *******" to really succeed or Michael Jordan in The Last Dance, how he found ways to motivate himself by basically inventing rivalries with people, and pretending they had said and done things they hadn't. It's part of the reason Keane was as good as he was, that endless drive to be better than the enemy and if he needs teammates to do it then they'll basically be treated as enemies too until they aren't.
We're all very Ireland-centric here, but the whole thing basically repeated at United when he went on MUTV to slate a bunch of players in 2005 he didn't think were performing adequately, and the club's CEO had to have the thing pulled before airing, with Keane gone from the club in short order. He learned nothing from what happened three years previously.
Author of Never Felt Better (History, Film Reviews).
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