World Cup Finals
01.06.2002 at 07:30 - Stadium Big Swan, Niigata
The week that has gone by since Roy Keane was sensationally dismissed from Ireland’s World Cup squad has only served to highlight the degree of upset and disappointment amongst the squad. They reflect on the conflicting and contradictory nature of much of what has gone wrong and ask rhetorically: “Why us?” And even more pertinent: “Why now?”
The answers to these questions are not to be found here in Japan where Ireland kicked-off their World Cup campaign earlier today against Cameroon. The answers can only be defined by one man, can only be delivered by one man: Roy Keane.
It is, perhaps, instructional to review the sequence of events for the background to this unprecedented situation seems somehow to have been lost in the unfolding drama of the campaign to bring him back.
Roy Keane, it will be recalled, first went to the manager privately to voice his dissatisfaction with various arrangements made for the team’s build-up to the World Cup by going to Saipan. Next there was the training-ground spat with Ireland’s goalkeepers and their coach, Packie Bonner.
This was quickly followed by his decision to go home, the manager’s attempt to secure Colin Healy as his replacement when he had failed to persuade Keane to change his mind and then the reversal of his own decision by Keane when others intervened.
The unfolding drama produced another twist when Keane provided a Dublin newspaper with a lengthy interview in which he criticised the arrangements he had previously discusses privately with the manager and, in the public domain remember, was critical of his playing colleagues and various other items.
It was then McCarthy decided that the underlying atmosphere within the camp was such that he should call a meeting of players and staff to clear the air.
Keane had involved the others in his newspaper article. Much has been made of this decision of McCarthy’s on the basis that he should have had a private meeting with Keane instead of opening up the issue before the others.
But the others were implicated in the article and McCarthy knew that in a short time they would have picked up on the contents of it.
So to the fateful meeting when Keane launched into his well publicised verbal assault of McCarthy and stormed out of the meeting after being told he was being sent home.
The subsequent efforts to persuade him to change his mind and his propagation of his interpretation of events on TV and in newspaper articles may well have caused some to forget the very relevant sequence of events in Saipan.
The fact is that McCarthy and Keane had a private meeting at which the team captain expressed his dissatisfaction with the arrangements.
At that point there was no opportunity of changing them but the team captain chose not to let the matters lie but instead continued to agitate about them, particularly in the newspaper article.
McCarthy made a further effort to reach some form of accommodation in private before he called his meeting with players and staff. He met Keane and discussed his complaints yet again.
Later, McCarthy said he sought to clarify the issues with him and said: “I specifically asked him is it me? No. Is it the training ground? No. Is it the flight? No. Is it the media circus we had when we left the airport? What is it? Is there anything that can be done to change it but he said it is none of those things, it is personal. He said it’s me, it’s me, it’s me. It’s personal.”
That report, delivered by McCarthy at a public press conference on Thursday, May 23 was surely significant. Surely the condition or the training pitch and the sundry other items mentioned by Keane were not, of themselves, enough to cause Keane to want to walk away from such a magnificent event as the World Cup finals.
All of the evidence that has emerged since, in players’ comments and in their attitude to training, suggested they were in support of the manager. Most of them — except the few senior internationals — were introduced to international football by the manager and they have travelled a long way with him over the past six years.
Mark Kinsella summed up what appears to have been the general attitude when he said: “Mick McCarthy has got the backing of the other players. We all want to do well. Within half-an-hour or an hour (of the fateful meeting) we had to try and forget what had happened, especially because we were so close to the World Cup.
“The players have given Mick their support. What happened was unfortunate but we are 110% behind him as the senior lads said, they were talking on behalf of the rest of us.”
One of those senior lads, Niall Quinn, said this week: “There has been a competitive edge to training since (Keane’s departure) that I have never before experienced with Ireland. I am still very upset by what happened and I wanted desperately for Roy to return but it is strange what has happened. I have never had worst preparation for any match and yet the players tell me I have never looked sharper in training.
“Once we cross that white line everything else is forgotten and all this week I have felt great in training. It is strange.”
The suggestion is that it is the younger players who approached Quinn with the suggestion that he try and create a situation that would enable Keane return to the squad. After working so hard to qualify for these finals they recognised they needed him in the team to maximise their effort and they also felt he deserved to be involved because of his contribution to their qualifying campaign.
But they also were surprised by what was said at the meeting and Damien Duff spelt it out when he outlined how he felt about the developments by saying: “I suppose it is a bit mixed really (my attitude).
I suppose it’s not nice for young lads facing what is supposed to be the greatest experience of our lives but the past couple of weeks have not been nice with what’s gone on but hopefully it is at the back of everyone’s minds now and we can get on with it.”
There was a bitter-sweet nature to his comments when he described the preparations as follows: “It’s been a bit of a roller-coaster ride so far with something different going on each day. But it’s not nice for us young lads in our first World Cup but hopefully it’s all behind us now and we can get on with things.”
Whatever the future holds the fact is that this World Cup is, inevitably, flawed for the Irish by what has happened. Roy Keane enjoys enormous popularity among the thousands of Manchester United fans in Ireland and farther afield.
The fact that he has openly rejected McCarthy as manager is certain to have serious repercussions.
Even if Ireland do so well in this World Cup that McCarthy’s position stewardship is endorsed, the kick off of the European Championship qualifying campaign next September will again reopen the affair.
There will, inevitably, be calls for Keane to be restored to the Irish team and for efforts to be made to effect a reconciliation between the pair.
But the sad truth is that Ireland’s magnificent qualification for the greatest football tournament in the world has been soured and the regrettable events of the past two weeks will leave a stain on the fabric of football that will never be erased.
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