KEANE IS IRISH FIRESTARTER
Critics may mock but O’Neill sidekick is key to World Cup charge
ROY Keane has become a cabaret act. Those were the words last week of the man who ghosted Keane’s first autobiography but who was now questioning his role with the Republic of Ireland.
eamon Dunphy — a former international and one of the country’s most prominent pundits — wanted to know exactly what the assistant boss brought to the national team.
It was as brutal as any of Keane’s savage soundings, as Dunphy said: ‘He’s a parody of the great player and leader that he was. now he’s just about cheap shots and easy headlines. Within minutes of his press briefings starting, Keane is trending on Twitter. Maybe that’s his job. To help the FaI’s social media profile.
‘He craves the headlines, worships the soundbites. His presence in the set-up is pointless.’
Was Dunphy brave? Or was he stupid? There were 29 players in the current Ireland squad who would almost certainly go with the latter in the wake of Monday’s 1-0 win in Wales. It is a result which has — against the odds, given they were fourth seeds in Group D — sent them through to next month’s World Cup qualifying play-offs.
Unlike Dunphy, they will be thrilled that Keane and manager Martin O’neill have agreed to stay on for two more years.
Speak to any of those — be it injured captain Seamus Coleman, stand- in skipper David Meyler or talisman James McClean — and they will tell you exactly what Keane does and what effect his presence has on a generation who idolised him as a player.
It was Timmy Murphy, his former youth team manager at Rockmount, who once said: ‘I used to call him the Boiler Man. You know, the fellow who mans the furnace, who gets things heated up and keeps them that way. He was the motivator, the leader.’
Keane the player is not dissimilar to Keane the assistant manager. Watch him on the training pitch and at times he can seem like a peripheral figure. He is not all balls, bibs, cones and drills.
Often he is the referee, a little ironic given the grief he caused officials down the years. But it is from that position, immersed in the action, that he makes the difference. The players want to impress him, they want to listen to him.
When McClean scored the only goal in austria last november, he said afterwards: ‘If I’d missed the target I think Roy would have killed me. Roy hammers us in training about making sure we hit the target. He drums that into us.’
Keane’s mere existence around the squad sets the standard. He has a ritual before matches and training where, while the players are warming up just yards away, he and coach Steve Guppy ping passes between each other. It serves as a subtle reminder — ‘Don’t ever forget that I wasn’t a bad player myself.’
In fact, he said words to that effect to this very correspondent when asked if he would have given Wales star Gareth Bale an early reducer in his playing days.
‘He might have been more worried about me. I could play a little bit, too, you know,’ he returned after a stare.
But Keane enjoys that interaction with the press. In an age where players are exposed to everything via mobile phones and social media, Dunphy has underestimated the impact Keane’s words can often have.
On the eve of last summer’s must-win final group match against Italy at euro 2016, he delivered a rallying cry so fierce that those present would have signed up for the Irish effort on the spot.
He spoke of needing courage and bravery, urging his players to cynically take out any would-be scorers before reminding them they were not in France to make friends. Ireland duly won 1-0.
around the camp, Keane imposes a €5 fine for players caught with their hands in their pockets. The proceeds go towards staff drinks at Christmas.
as he left the pitch after the celebrations in Cardiff, a beaming Keane motioned with his arms to a friend in the crowd, suggesting that a few pints would be sunk in the coming hours. not that Keane drinks any more.
Rather, he gets his kicks from this — helping his country defy expectations. These players, in truth, should not be good enough to make the last 16 of the euros and come within half an hour of beating the hosts. nor should they be good enough to reach a World Cup.
Indeed, when looking ahead to the qualifying campaign while on punditry duty last summer, Ryan Giggs joked of the ‘nice easy group’ Wales were in. He was sitting next to Keane, who responded by slapping his former Manchester United team-mate on the leg before shooting a menacing smile.
Keane has had the last laugh this week. It is because of him — and O’neill — that Ireland are two matches away from next year’s finals in Russia.
Keane said following Ireland’s dismal showing at euro 2012 that players and supporters had to change their mentality. ‘We are a small country, we are up against it,’ he said, ‘but let’s not just go along for the sing-song every now and again.’
With Keane on board, that mentality has changed. as O’neill said of his sidekick last week: ‘He’s a winner, an inspirational figure.’
So that, Mr Dunphy, is what Roy Keane does. The cabaret act could well be the man who helps put Ireland back on the biggest stage of all.