Roy didn’t box clever but he helped a club rediscover its heart
Although his eventual departure was acrimonious, the Corkman was an
‘We were two young people. I’d never been in business and Roy had never been in management. All the Moneyball people now will tell you it’s not going to work, you shouldn’t do it, it’s crazy. The fact the Drumaville guys took a chance on the two us, it was just a real strong show of confidence in us.’ Former Sunderland chairman, Niall Quinn – August 2016.
AER ARANN arranged a deal with the club to charter flights from Dublin, Cork, Galway and Derry. They were packed with Irish Sunderland fans heading to England’s north-east every other weekend. Dundalk-based bookmakers Boylesports became shirt sponsors. There were 15 corporate boxes in the Stadium of Light owned by businesses here. The club had had a tent at the Galway Races. Their bank was Anglo Irish.
‘We later found out that the loan book they had with us was considered the best they had. We were paying in cash every week,’ Quinn laughs.
In the summer of 2006 the Celtic Tiger was purring and its claws were expensively manicured. Sunderland were about to become the most Irish club in Britain as the Drumaville Consortium – made up of publicans Charlie Chawk and Louis Fitzgerald, billionaire Seán Mulryan and fellow property developers Jack Tierney, Patsy Kelly and the late Paddy Byrne – started the process of taking control.
All were Irish except for Sunderlandborn travel tycoon John Hays. It was a club that had been relegated from the Premier League the season before with 15 points – a record worst.
‘It had lost its way completely, the life and soul had been sucked out of it until Niall and the Drumaville boys came in,’ Graeme Anderson, chief football reporter at the Sunderland Echo from 1995 to 2014 explains.
Quinn, then just 39, brought the idea of buying the club to Drumaville after a meeting with previous owner Bob Murray ended with him pleading for new owners. The group were in a horse syndicate together but this wasn’t Quinn informing them about an increase in stud fees. ‘They didn’t tell me to get lost, so I took that as a good sign,’ he jokes.
With the tutelage of former Kerry Group chairman Denis Brosnan, who aided John Magnier and JP McManus with their purchasing of shares in Manchester United, Quinn got to grips with the legalities of what was required to see things through.
While all this was going on in the background from March to July, they still couldn’t find a manager. Roy Keane, having retired from playing, decided the time wasn’t right after being flown to Ireland for talks by helicopter.
‘We were told to back off by Bolton for Sam Allardyce, Martin [O’Neill] was around but his wife was sick so it didn’t suit him. We looked at Steve Bould who was working with the Arsenal academy at the time,’ Quinn recalls.
‘We considered a lot but we didn’t want to just pick someone who was seventh or eighth on the list. It had to be the right appointment and eventually it was agreed that I would take it up until a point that I did well and I would keep it or…’
Sunderland lost their first four Championship games, suffered a 2-0 defeat to Bury, then sitting bottom of the Football League, in the League Cup, before Quinn oversaw a win against West Brom. ‘Michael Kennedy, Roy’s representative, told us after the first meeting to try again in a month or so after he had a holiday and see how he felt then. He had a change of heart and that’s when it all fell into place.’
‘People often say that the Championship is one of the toughest leagues in the world. I won it as a manager – I have to say that. No one else ever does.’ Roy Keane with Roddy Doyle: The Second Half – 2014.
After agreeing a contract worth more than £1 million a year on August 28, 2006, Keane quickly got to work. Sunderland made six signings on deadline day that summer. The reason, other than his late arrival, was that Drumaville still only owned 88 per cent of shares and needed to gain 90 per cent to force a compulsory buyout of the remainder and have their transfer embargo lifted.
Quinn, the new chairman and public face of a revived Sunderland, was given a list of shareholders and got to work cold-calling hundreds of supporters with anything from £10 to £10,000 worth of shares looking to reach the threshold. ‘Once Roy was confirmed it made things a lot easier,’ he admits.
GRAHAM KAVANAGH and David Connolly arrived from Wigan Athletic, so too Ross Wallace and Stan Varga from Celtic, while Liam Miller left Manchester United. But the signing Keane said was the best of all was Dwight Yorke. On the back of appearing at that summer’s World Cup with Trinidad and Tobago, the Cork man’s old United team-mate was six months into a stint with Sydney FC in Australia.
Yorke was 34 and just three months younger than his new manager when he waltzed through the door flashing that million-dollar smile. ‘I felt it was an honour to even have Keano call me and ask to come because I was in the twilight of my career,’ he says.
‘It was a challenge not just for me but also for Roy. It was one that worked out for us both. He did a remarkable job while he was there,’ Yorke continues. ‘I had a new motivation and incentive to play the game. I wasn’t one of the young lads any more, I wasn’t doing the young things I used to and that I saw all these young players do. I had to try and guide them as much as I could.
‘I saw the leadership qualities of Keano and played with him so I knew what he represented at United. All those things leave a mark. I had to adapt from being a Jack the lad, which is more my character, to be experienced and set an example.
‘I knew it would have to be different from being a team-mate to being my manager. It was a transitional period in his career and I had to respect that. I treated him like I would Sir Alex. I didn’t just stroll up and think because I played with him I could disrespect him. No way.’
Sunderland soon built up a head of steam in the Championship, crowds increasing from 13,000 to more than 40,000, and by February ’07 they were in the play-off positions. ‘To see Roy in action for those months, when he was absolutely at his best and the team believed in him so much, it was definitely the most pleasurable time I’ve had at the football club,’ Quinn adds.
The good times continued but they wouldn’t last.
‘One of the press officers was briefing Roy about who’s who. Roy stopped them and said “no, no, don’t tell me their names, I don’t want to know their names”. He didn’t want to get into a personal thing and that was fine. He was always going to be judged on his results.’ Graeme Anderson, former Sunderland Echo Chief Football Writer – August 2016. AFTER winning promotion as champions, Sunderland travelled to Birmingham City for their second game in the Premier League. When they arrived at St Andrew’s, Keane noticed a large poster of former Birmingham striker Stern John staring back at him in the tunnel. The burly forward was now a Sunderland player and something triggered in Keane’s head. He made a late change to his starting XI and decided to play him against his old club. John scored a late equaliser to earn a 2-2 draw. ‘That was just one thing Roy did that took people by surprise. We all thought he was going to be like that mad, angry character from the Peperami adverts but he changed that perception straight away. It did