The Keano media wrap: What Roy Keane had to say yesterday
It’s pretty hard to avoid Roy Keane in today’s papers. Here’s a wrap-up of what the Cork man had to say.
Roy Keane’s annual trip to Ireland in support of the Guide Dogs for the Blind has become an annual media feeding frenzy, with blanket coverage of every utterance from the former Manchester United star.
This year was no exception so what did Roy discuss this year? Well top of the agenda, as always, was Saipan. As we approach the 10th anniversary of the ‘incident’, and with Ireland about to embark on their first major championship since, it seemed appropriate to bring up the topic again. Roy’s view, as you can imagine, hadn’t changed, maintaining he walked out over accusations of faking an injury, not so much the facilities.
"We were packed,” Keane says of the fateful stay in Saipan in the Irish Examiner. “We were moving on to the next training camp next morning. Things were done and dusted. Obviously, I’d done an article and Mick pulled it out and said I was having a go and all that nonsense and that I should have played in the second game against Iran.
"And that was the reason I didn’t play in the World Cup, simple as that, forget about facilities because all that had been sorted out and I knew we were going on to better ones.
"I’ve never faked an injury in my life. If anything, I played with too many injuries. But people still miss the point and it’s crazy after all this time."
And he denied that McCarthy ever sent him home too.
"Mick sent me nowhere. I told him where to go. What? Do you think Mick McCarthy said to me, ‘I’m sending you home’?"
So that’s that sorted once and for all. Maybe. Anyway, onto this year’s tournament. Roy believes Ireland have to get something out of the opener against Croatia to have any chance of success and he added a ominous note in the Daily Mirror, saying: “Trust me, if Ireland are to do well, they need a few breaks.”
Roy would also bring Sunderland starlet James McClean to Poland based on his form but he told Matt Cooper on Today FM yesterday that he understood Trap’s loyalty to players and the desire to reward those who achieved qualification.
As for his next job, Roy seems happy enough as a pundit, but he wants to get back into club management, a position he has been out of for 16 months, calling his job search “a priority”.
But he won’t be going into international management, with Ireland or anyone else, in the near future, saying that he’s “too young”.
Keane also gave his views on Gary Neville as a pundit: “I have listened to him enough".
On having any sort of a relationship with Alex Ferguson again: “I wouldn’t have thought so, no".
And on the death of his beloved Triggs in the Irish Times: “She was there throughout my career, the ups and downs, the good times and the bad. The beauty was that no matter what was going on she needed walking. And she’d look at me and . . . ah, that’s life, isn’t it? She was really ill the last few months. The man upstairs looked after her.”
There you have it. All sides of Roy from the hard to the soft. Interesting eh?
