I can still hear the knock on the hotel door 20 years on… ‘He’s gone! He’s gone!’
IInstead of the Three Amigos of ’94, there was a warzone
T’S twenty years after Saipan. Twenty years… hard to believe. While the time has flown, memories of That Week in the Pacific, of That Day, remain seared into the consciousness.
Whose side were you on, Mick McCarthy or Roy Keane?
Who won? No one. Who lost? Romantic Ireland did. Arguably, it was never the same after Dave O’Leary in 1990 when George Hamilton and the nation held its breath in Genoa.
I can still hear journalist Paul Kimmage knocking on our hotel room doors that fateful May day, a bit like Paul Revere warning the colonists in 1775 that trouble was ahead.
‘He’s gone, he’s gone!’ cried Kimmage. There could only be one ‘He’.
It had to be Roy, Keano, our best player. Our captain. And he was gone. Gone where?
He’d wanted out a couple of days earlier but that had been sorted after Fergie got on the phone. Hadn’t it? Say it ain’t so, Roy. Say it.
We grabbed notebooks and tape recorders and dashed to the Hyatt Regency Hotel next door. The five-star palace overlooked Smiling Cove harbour but the mood was grim.
On a platform in a conference room, an ashen McCarthy held court.
Flanking him were Steve Staunton, Alan Kelly and Niall Quinn. Packie Bonner was in the wings.
McCarthy matter of factly confirmed he’d sent Keane home from the World Cup. Not to his room. Not to stand under a tree. But home. To bloody Blighty.
It followed an explosive Keano rant in front of all the players and coaching staff after McCarthy challenged his captain over comments in an incendiary interview.
Was this really happening, we wondered? Couldn’t someone broker peace? Where was Keano to explain himself? In his room packing his bags for Guam.
McCarthy had already pulled Keano back from the edge of the Banzai Cliff in Saipan but he wasn’t going to do it a second time. Rather, he tipped Keane over. He felt he had to.
The FAI were hopelessly unprepared for it all. They expected a week of R and R, of sunny press conferences, of barbies by the beach.
Instead of the Three Amigos of ’94, there was a war zone. The pitch was rockhard and the training gear was late.
Keano was Mr Tetchy – he squared up to me in Amsterdam airport on the way out.
There was an infamous night out for players and press in The Beefeater pub only Keano, who was off the drink, didn’t go. Instead, he stewed in his room while the rest of us got steamed.
When McCarthy and the lads went off golfing, Keano opened up to Kimmage and the man from the paper of record.
The pin was soon out of the grenade and the FAI had no one in Saipan to defuse things and keep Keane inside the tent, even if he was p ***** g on McCarthy.
Once Keane left Saipan alone, and the shelling started, it didn’t stop until we got to Niigata for the opener against Cameroon.
When the Ireland team sheet was submitted without the No 6, it was the point of no return.
No more Tommie Gorman. No more thinking of the children. No more Keano. No bloody chance. Or was there?
It was a modest World Cup and Ireland did okay. Between playing for McCarthy, themselves and the shirt, the Irish players finished strongly in every game, equalising deep into battle against Cameroon, Germany and Spain.
A week in humid Saipan, for all the rubbish thrown at them, helped them reach the last 16 in Suwon where they had Spain on toast in extra-time if only they believed in themselves.
And when it was over, McCarthy couldn’t win as Keano was never going to go away. McCarthy should have resigned the morning after the Spanish defeat but his stubbornness wouldn’t allow him to. It was a mistake.
He limped on, a dead man walking, but was gone before the end of the year. After a two-year break, Keano was back. But he wasn’t the Keano of 2002, the Keano who could have led Ireland to World Cup glory.
As for the FAI, there was a postSaipan power grab by John Delaney who promised reform and transparency.
It was the cue for greed, extravagance, debts, the ill-fated Vantage Club and a wretched regime that almost bankrupted the FAI.
And yet Saipan didn’t have to happen. There was a way around it all, of keeping the grumpy genie in the bottle.
If only McCarthy had given Keane a pass from the Pacific trip and allowed him to hook up with the squad on arrival in Japan.
The elite standards in Izumo, hotel, training pitches etc, were exactly up Keane’s alley and the game against Cameroon was a week away.
When McCarthy arrived on May 24, he declared Keane was history. But he wasn’t then, he isn’t now, and never will be. If only…