Roy Keane

[Bonker Gudd]

This from an Irish paper, coupla weeks back. Not everyone in
Ireland worships the ground he treads on

JP
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Keane - An 'Immaculate' Loser

I AM sitting here, on Tuesday night, inside Mick McCarthy's tent,
wondering exactly what I should tell you, the good Irish people about
Roy Keane.

Keano, as he likes to be known, is currently outside peeing in with
the force of a typhoon. He is attempting to drown the tent and all
inside it as he pees venom and vitriol in all our directions. Those
inside are faced with a dilemma. Mick, wise man that he is, is keeping
his counsel as the pee hits the fan. The rest of us have to make up
our own minds, me included.

Should I now stay faithful to my old friend, the lord of the tent, and
tell you that Keano is the biggest spoiled brat to come out of Ireland
since your man out of Boyzone? Should I tell you how half the country
is laughing at Roy, and the other half feels sorry for the poor wee
fellow from Cork who is more sinned against than sinning? Should I
quote my other mate Jack Charlton about how the easiest thing in the
world right now is to sit back and laugh as we watch Roy Keane dig a
hole, a very big hole, outside the tent?

Well, folks, I have decided to take a surprising stand. I have a favor
to ask of all of you, a little request to make from me to you, good
people. I want you to go out next month and spend some hard earned
money. I want you all to buy a soccer book. No, I don't want you to
buy my forthcoming book on Mick McCarthy. Not unless you absolutely
want to. No, if you only buy one book from home in time for this
Christmas, I want you all to make sure it's the Roy Keane biography.

In fact, if you only buy one soccer book in your lifetime, please
ensure it is Eamon Dunphy's wonderful new account of life as Roy
Keane. Heck, if you can't even read, buy it and get someone else to
engage you with the wonderful prose, the hard hitting truths and the
lurid self-depreciation of one of the world's greatest players.

And then, when you're finished digesting the greatest sports book of
all time about the greatest footballer of all time and written by the
greatest journalist of all time, give me a call. And I'll let you in
on a few secrets that aren't contained inside the pages of Eamon and
Roy's vendetta catalogue, otherwise known as The Autobiography -
Keane.

When you make that call, I'll tell you what it's really like to know
The two sides of Roy Keane, national icon and international treasure,
according to the radio Muppet Dunphy. I'll let you know exactly how
hysterical it is to listen to Eamo on his own radio show describe Roy
Keane as an "immaculate" human being, the same Roy who has brawled his
way across England and Ireland and ended up in a Cork court after
calling a neighbor's child a *****.

I'll tell you what it feels like to be Alf Inge Haaland, the
Manchester City midfielder whose career now hangs on a thread because
Keane deliberately, as he reveals in his book, butchered him in a
derby game two seasons ago. I'll let you know how several young Irish
players were so intimidated by Keane's presence in the international
squad that they dreaded his arrival at the Dublin Airport hotel, how
they hated his very presence on the team bus.

I'll tell you how he refused a request from Sunderland football club -
not from me, by the way - to cooperate with Niall Quinn's testimonial
program because he severely dislikes loveable Niall. I'll tell you how
jealous he is of Steve Staunton that he deliberately set out to
castigate Ireland's real World Cup captain before the tournament
began.

Maybe I'll explain, to you and Eamon, that it was Richard Dunne who
sat beside Niall Quinn on a flight to Barcelona from Cyprus, and not
Derek Dunne as stated in Tuesday's serialization in London's Times.
As an aside, the only Derek Dunne I know who played football was also
a drug dealer and was killed in Amsterdam a couple of years back.

And, if you're really lucky, I'll even tell you what it's like to pick
Roy Keane out of his own puke in a Manchester Airport hotel bar, as I
did some years back only days before his first European Cup appearance
for United. Now, to be honest, I regret I didn't leave him to drown in
his own vomit, though he is making rather a good stab at that himself
as we speak.

I have to come clean here. Of course, folks, I am "bitter and
twisted," according to some. when it comes to Roy Keane. I am even
cast as "Mick's mate" in Keane's book, literally, and that is akin to
dancing with the devil in the eyes of the man who can now do
absolutely no wrong in any regard. So don't believe anything I tell
you about Roy Keane unless you want to.

And if you want to, let me explain a few facts about our Roy, the man
who is so perfect now at everything he does. In his time, as he admits
in his book, Roy was king of the thugs. That's why the aforementioned
Alf Inge Haaland has barely kicked a ball in the 18 months since Roy
exacted revenge for a previous encounter at Elland Road. As Haaland
lay on the ground, Keane reveals, he looked at him and he said, "Take
that you c***." Role model stuff, indeed.

He likes his language, does our Roy. Saved some of the best of it for
Saipan when he branded Mick McCarthy everything from an "effing c***"
to an "effing w****r in the course of an eight minute tirade of abuse.
Why? Was it because Mick accused Keane of feigning injury ahead of
Ireland's game against Iran, as Keano and his Muppeteer Dunphy would
have you believe?

Was it heck. There were 32 other people in that room that night, and
not one of them heard Mick accuse Keane of feigning injury. That is
definitely a Roy Keane/Eamon Dunphy exclusive. So is their use of
vulgar language. The only foul and abusive language in Mick
McCarthy's book comes when he quotes Keane in that Saipan meeting.
Yes, Mick has been known to curse from time to time. He lives in a
rough man's world where such language is common. But he is also a man
of great dignity.

He knows his book will be read by children, the very people that
Dunphy claims Keane is a role model for. And he knows, in his heart
and soul, that only one man has let his country down when it mattered
in recent years. Roy Keane did not want to play for Jack Charlton or
Mick McCarthy, that is clearly evident as he assassinates both men in
his Dunphyite words. He didn't even want to play in the game that
decided Ireland's World Cup fate in Iran last November, walking out
of the team hotel without as much as a word to his teammates as they
went off to training and he left for the airport. His apologists
forget that.

They also forget that in Saipan, two nights before he was thrown out
of the World Cup, Keane quit international football not once but three
times. He told McCarthy he was retiring after the 2002 finals, no
matter what happened in Japan or Korea. Now he is claiming that he
will play for Ireland again, but only if Mick gets the sack. What
about that retirement announcement in the Irish Times, Roy?

Keane even goes so far as to call Mick a comedian in his brilliant
book. Well, I have a question for the Roy wonder. Who dressed up in a
stupid looking Leprechaun suit to make a television advert for Walkers
crisps? Was it Mick McCarthy or Roy Keane? Yes, you guessed right -
Roy Keane, the biggest joke of all. Happy reading!

By Cathal Dervan - Irish Voice, 14th Aug 2002.

[MerrionComputin]

There are 1.4 million reasons for Roy Keane's recent behaviour and every one has the queen's head on it.