Keane only embarrasses the phonies

IN THE early days of the new year, a humdrum sports bulletin ended with the gormless broadcaster reminding the host that the twentieth anniversary of Saipan would occur in a few months.

Brace yourself for boredom, was the message. In the real world, Saipan remains, for those who remember it, a vivid event, one of the most dramatic Irish sports stories imaginable.

But, to a certain strain of thinking, Saipan is an embarrassment because its central figure is.

This tends to be the same constituency that were arguing at points last year against the importance of results in sport, as part of their defence of the beleaguered-looking Stephen Kenny.

Incidentally, Ireland got better and then results mattered again.

To these serious minds, Roy Keane (above) is a bore, an unthinking pundit who thinks about the game in black and white terms that are desperately unsophisticated.

To the rest of us, Keane remains the most compelling figure in Irish sport, a man who was a terrifically high achiever, a standard-setter in an extraordinary team.

His failures speak to a difficulty in relating to modern players that is a significant handicap to his ambitions of jump-starting his career as a manager.

Whatever his fate, Keane will remain not just a polarising figure, but a fascinating one.

His views might embarrass some sophisticates, but they entertain and inform many, many more.