If he feels he’s wrong, Roy will apologise, insists O’Neill
But he doesn’t reveal if he thinks he’s overdone it this time around
ROY KEANE retains Martin O’Neill’s permission to let rip at the Ireland players. Rather than muzzle his No2 for the verbal exchanges which prompted Harry Arter to walk away prior to the Nations League game in Cardiff, the Republic Ireland manager will allow the quick-fused Keane to keep shooting from the lip.
O’Neill is adamant that Keane’s volcanic ways are not personal but an indication of a desire to challenge Ireland’s players to improve and become the best they can be in a green jersey. He revealed that where Keane has felt he over-stepped the mark, he has made amends with those involved.
In the case of last summer’s row with Jon Walters and Arter in Dublin before the USA friendly, the former was ‘able to give as good as he gets’, whereas Arter had had enough.
It left an already under-strength Ireland a player light in Cardiff on Thursday night but O’Neill defended Keane’s right to let rip against players. ‘When Roy was at United he dished out rollickings to everyone around him, he was Alex Ferguson’s man on the pitch,’ recalled O’Neill. ‘I’ve seen it. I was Leicester manager at Filbert Street and he was at top players like Gary Neville inside five minutes, he drove them on. ‘It depends how you react to it. I think the (United) players would have accepted it because he was driving them on to championships, even the players who are not so extroverted, like say Paul Scholes. I’ve appreciated Roy’s role with us. Sometimes he does give out rollickings and there have been times when he’s come to me and said “I went overboard there, I’ll have a word with the lad” and he does.
‘And sometimes it comes down to the player involved. Jon Walters was involved in that business earlier in the year but was with us this week. Of course, Jon is well able to give back as good as he gets from anyone.’
O’Neill believes Keane’s influence has helped contribute to a sense of camaraderie in the group over the course of 50 games with Ireland, even if not everyone would agree with such an observation.
‘What I am protective of is a real strong group ethic here. Honestly, I don’t think we’d have got the things we got without it,’ O’Neill insisted.
He recalled his time at Celtic where players fell out with him, and each other, and then made up, for the betterment of team, and the dressing room.
‘To think of the amount of scrapes I had with people with Celtic and we were very successful there. Sometimes you didn’t mind it. I wasn’t always encouraging it because I didn’t want a player coming and hitting me to the delight of the rest of the boys in the dressing room. But I did fight my corner, and still do.’
With Arter in a strop over Keane, O’Neill was asked if he felt modern day footballers are a bit more precious than they were.
‘Oh, there’s no question (about that), and that’s not peculiar to my own situation here,’ he replied. ‘Obviously, I haven’t managed at league level for five years now. You think the changes are slight and then they become more pronounced.
‘Players today mostly cannot deal with scenarios which we would have been forced to deal with in my time as players, with younger players getting a lot of things quite early in their career.’
As an example of one with the right approach, O’Neill cited Liverpool all-rounder James Milner, whom he signed for Aston Villa.
‘It wouldn’t matter what he would be getting in terms of money, he had that drive and attitude. It was great to see him play in a Champions’ League final,’ stated O’Neill.
‘I’m absolutely certain of our lads, or their attitude, that they want to play, they want to play for Ireland. And I don’t think they have been spoiled in any way,’ said O’Neill.
Behind the scenes, he is doing all he can to convince Rice to sign up for duty and he is hopeful the teenager’s ‘inclination’ is leaning that way. As for the players, captain Seamus Coleman stressed in Cardiff about ‘welcoming him [Rice] back with open arms.’
When O’Neill returns from the friendly in Poland on Wednesday, further dialogue with the Rice camp is expected as he is desperate to have the West Ham teenager in the ranks for the Nations League doubler-header next month against Denmark and Wales.
After the 4-1 shambles on Thursday, he will be needed.
‘I was speaking to his father and he sent me very nice messages. I just think he (Rice) needs a wee bit of time because his head is spinning,’ he said before offering a hint of advice to the 19-year-old prospect.
‘If Declan wants to have a look at it realistically, he might find out there’s a number of players in the position he might want to play, in who are much more advanced for England at this minute.
‘Declan isn’t starting in the West Ham team at the moment. Listen, he’s a young fella and he’s got a little bit of time. When he makes that decision, he wants it to be final. You can’t go on for an indeterminate amount of time. I’ll give it a while longer.’
O’Neill won his first Northern Ireland jersey in an amateur international in 1970 when with Distillery, and coveted it dearly. International football, for him, was so more straightforward then.
‘Lots and lots have things changed since my time. We had Chris Nicholl playing for us (Northern Ireland), who was born in Aldershot. I used to think “that’s really strange”.
‘I’m much older now, things have changed in that you can go back to your grandparent and be eligible. In an ideal world, I’d love to field a team of players born in Cork, Galway, Dublin or Dundalk. But it’s not happening.
‘You have to compete with other nations.’
Preferably, O’Neill would like a return to the rule which ties a player to a country once he has been capped at senior level, as Rice has three times.
‘We should get back to changing the rules. You used to put on the shirt and that was it,’ he confirmed.
When Rice pulled on his first senior shirt against Turkey in March, he was emphatic that he would ever only listen to Ireland’s call.
‘I’m quite sure think Declan probably didn’t think that England would be coming way back when he was making those points back then,’ acknowledged O’Neill, who knows his diplomatic skills can only go so far, with Rice and Arter too.
‘Sometime players need to persuade themselves. I’ve done enough in my time of being Kofi Annan,’ O’Neill concluded wryly.