Although Roy Keane was out of sight under the swaying palm trees, his accent, Corkonian and confrontational, was unmistakable.
‘Take his bloody head off,’ he barked from the shadows.
It was a humid night in May 2002 in the middle of the Pacific and the Republic of Ireland players, coaching staff, together with a handful of journalists, were enjoying a beachside bonding barbecue after an aching 22-hour trip from Dublin.
The ‘we’re all in this together’ approach under manager Mick McCarthy extended to the journalists on the Irish football beat who had reported on the road to the World Cup.
We flew out of Tehran at midnight with our ticket punched to the finals in Japan and South Korea.
I recall the pilot announcing we had entered Iraqi airspace and he was permitting alcohol to be served. The roar at 29,000 feet carried half-way to Dublin – it had been an arid four days in Iran.
We were back on world football’s greatest stage – something that briefly beckoned for the current team under Heimir Hallgrimsson this summer after their thrilling gate-crashing feats into the playoffs – and everyone was happy, from Bertie to Zig and Zag.
Well, not everyone. Roy Maurice Keane, for one.
Roy Keane shows his frustration during training in Saipan in May 2002
As we set out for the Far East, Ireland’s leading player, the inspirational team captain, had the hump. He was antagonistic towards McCarthy, the FAI blazers and sections of the press, one of whom was me.
After fighting a winning battle with alcohol, Keane’s road to recovery may have contributed to the seismic events of Saipan.
The simmering shifts in the plates under Keane were evident before we touched down in the middle of the world’s deepest waters.
At Dublin Airport, Keano stayed sitting while the Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, a Manchester United lifer, offered his hand and posed for a snap.
When we stopped off at Amsterdam, he made a beeline for me in the departure lounge, clearly angered at reports of his no-show at Niall Quinn’s Testimonial, the week before.
In fairness, he had a point as McCarthy had given him permission to skip the game. The better news line was to suggest Keane was a possible injury scare before the World Cup, which he was, with a knee that needed minding.
Keane felt slighted by the coverage and let me know what he thought of it. In Amsterdam, he pinned me to a wall and let rip. But for the arrival of Steve Staunton, I might have been the first casualty of the World Cup.
On the flight to Tokyo, Keane spoke briefly to journalists and stressed his displeasure at how his Sunderland absence was portrayed. His point was that he was on the ‘plane and ready to play’.
For the barbecue gathering, the night after we touched down in Saipan, Keane’s mood was not improved by the chronic state of the training pitch, which had one set of goalposts, and more than one pothole.
Keane and teammate Ian Harte in Saipan with manager Mick McCarthy
The skips containing the gear arrived late and the players initially had to train in the tops and shorts they brought with them, of which they had plenty. Also contrary to some suggestions, they also had footballs, if not the ones that FIFA would use in the finals, as they were delayed.
Even so, it was all a bit amateurish, which got under Keane’s skin even if Saipan was intended to be about light training and getting accustomed to the humidity, while generating a team spirit to take into World Cup battle.
Which explained the barbecue. From memory, the spread was lavish, but it was the entertainment that turned heads – and nearly cost me mine.
A group of native Mariana Islanders, daubed in war paint, brandished burning spears which they threw at a board akin to an archer’s target.
When volunteers were asked to stand in the line of fire, the local beer got the better of me and I went on to the raised stage.
It was then that Keano’s cry carried across the sands – I knew then there would be no one-on-one exclusive interview that week with Ireland’s captain.
Others that night were already plotting in that regard, and their diligence would be rewarded with interviews which blew the lid off Ireland’s preparations for the finals and continues to provoke debate today.
That barbecue gathering spilled over into a local bar, The Beefeater, where players and press mingled until the wee hours.
Keane gave it a miss as socialising in a pub environment wasn’t his thing at the time. In his younger days with Ireland, he would have been the last man standing on a night out.
It was probably just as well that Keane missed the moment where one Irish player, in all seriousness, asked aloud, ‘Has anyone got a problem with my lifestyle?’ He had a bottle of beer in each hand and a cigarette behind his ear at the time.
As for Keane, it seemed he had issues with just about everything and everyone on the island.
Mail soccer writer Philip Quinn
He fell out with Packie Bonner as he felt the goalkeepers hadn’t put in a proper shift in training. That they started earlier than the outfield players, which is still the case, didn’t cut it with Keane.
Returning to the hotel after that second day’s training session, he informed McCarthy he wanted out of the World Cup and was going home.
Startled, McCarthy asked Keane was the problem the pitch, the gear arriving late, or was it him, the manager? Keane said, ‘No. It’s me.’
It took the intervention of Manchester United manager, Alex Ferguson, among others, in a series of overnight phone calls, to persuade Keane to change his mind, which he did in the nick of time to be registered with FIFA for the finals – Colin Healy had been put on stand-by by McCarthy.
Only the sense of calm, as we all found out, would be temporary.
Saipan was no stranger to volatility. Five miles across the shark-infested Saipan Bay lay the island of Tinian, from where the plane carrying the first atomic bomb, destined for Hiroshima, took off in 1945. The long runway was visible across the sound.
In World War Two, fighting between American and Japanese troops in Saipan in the summer of 1944 was as fierce as any in the Pacific theatre.
Forced back, inch by inch, to the highest point of the island, Japanese soldiers, and civilians too, threw themselves to death rather than give themselves up to the Americans. No surrender was also Keane’s approach. Together with a group of press colleagues, I visited the ‘Suicide Cliffs’ during the week and paused for a moment’s sombre reflection at the jagged rocks down below.
As an uneasy peace settled on the Irish party, McCarthy teed off with most of the squad, and the press corps, for a midweek round of golf.
A non-golfer, Keane stayed back in the hotel. With nothing to do, he agreed to four interviews, two to RTÉ, and one each to The Irish Times and the Sunday Independent.
The grenades he unpinned included his impending international retirement, strident criticism of the FAI and, to a lesser degree, McCarthy’s management.
Roy Keane takes his dog Triggs for a walk after returning to his home in England
It was only a matter of time before the cat was out of the bag, to use a phrase of subsequent Irish manager, Giovanni Trappatoni, which led to Ireland competing in the World Cup without their best player. Keane’s number six jersey was never used.
On reflection, there were mistakes on all sides. I felt then, and still do, that McCarthy was wrong to drag Keane to the Pacific retreat. Beer, barbecues and birdies were not Keane’s thing.
Leaving Keane at home, to bring Triggs for walkies, before joining up with the party in the Japanese base of Izumo, was a safer option. Instead, McCarthy’s ‘one for all and all for one’ approach, while admirable, backfired.
McCarthy also erred in calling the infamous team meeting after reading a transcript of Keane’s explosive interview in The Irish Times and demanding if anyone had a problem to speak up. Keane was never going to ignore that challenge and as exchanges became heated between the two men, he let rip with a volley of vitriol which gave McCarthy no choice but to sanction the exit of his one world-class player.
I can still recall Paul Kimmage rapping on doors with a message that we were to hightail it into the team hotel next door for an emergency press conference.
When I asked Paul what the urgency was, he said, ‘He’s going home.’ ‘Who is,’ I asked. ‘Keane,’ he replied. I don’t think I ever moved as fast on the football beat.
That led to another image I’ll never forget, that of McCarthy, sitting on a raised stage in a small conference room, informing the small band of journalists who had travelled to the island expecting to file little news, that he had decided to send Keane home.
Alan Kelly, Niall Quinn, Mick McCarthy, Milo Corcoran and Steve Staunton face the press
Doing his best to appear calm yet clearly strained by the enormity of what he felt compelled to do, McCarthy was flanked by Alan Kelly and Niall Quinn to his right, with Milo Corcoran, the FAI vice-president, and Steve Staunton, to his left.
The presence of three senior players was significant. They all endorsed McCarthy’s call to banish Keane, a call which continues to shadow McCarthy to this day. It will never leave him.
In fairness to McCarthy, it would have required the skills of a diplomat and psychologist to stay onside with Keane, so tricky was the captain to handle at that time.
Had he spoken to Keane privately behind closed doors about the points raised in his newspaper interview, the outcome could have been so much different. Keane’s gripes in print were nothing compared to his explosive tirade in public against his manager.
Even so, Keane must shoulder responsibility for the disruption to Ireland’s World Cup plans. In prickly mood before leaving Dublin, he was picking rows left, right and centre before dropping the bombshell early on in Saipan that he was going home, only to then change his mind.
He was minutes away from missing the FIFA deadline for squads to be submitted when he relayed a message to McCarthy he would be staying.
By the time of the notorious team meeting two days later, his mood was anything but conciliatory.
When forced into a corner, prompted by a suggestion from McCarthy that he may have feigned injury to miss an Ireland game, he exploded. He called McCarthy ‘a w****r; who ‘could shove the World Cup up his a**e’.
Thereafter, the only route back into the tent was to withdraw his comments, only retreating was not in Keane’s psyche, just as it wasn’t for the Japanese soldiers on the island over half a century earlier.
Keane during the famous 1-0 victory over the Netherlands in Lansdowne Road in September 2001
Undoubtedly, Keane allowed his personal animosity towards McCarthy, whom he fell out with on his first Irish tour to the United States in 1992, to mask his responsibilities to his team-mates and to his country.
While leading by example on the pitch, he was publicly insubordinate to his manager off it and McCarthy felt compelled to draw a line in the sand and move on without his best player. Would Keane, had he been manager, acted any differently? I doubt it.
Yet, more than anyone, Keane had dragged the team unbeaten through the qualifiers. More than anyone, he had earned the right to perform in the greatest theatre of all.
He was 30 years of age and the keystone of the most successful Manchester United team of all time. His loss was immeasurable.
As for the FAI, they took their eye badly off the ball. Their delegation in Saipan was lightweight and this lack of leadership on the island was cruelly exposed. The late Corcoran, a mild-mannered sort, was never going to front up to McCarthy or Keane It meant there was no one on the island senior enough to prevent McCarthy from calling the infamous meeting or, when it was over, dragging McCarthy and Keane into a room to find a resolution.
Keane and McCarthy shake hands at the end of the Netherlands victory
Once the squad left Saipan, there was no way back for Keane, for all the handwringing of those desperate to broker a deal. Everyone did their bit, especially back home, no one more so than the late Tommie Gorman, who knew his football, on RTÉ.
Had Keane led Ireland into battle, who knows how the course of Irish football history may have been shaped? The teams in the 2002 World Cup lacked stellar quality, Brazil and Germany apart, and Ireland could have gone deep in the competition.
This was a squad, remember, with five subsequent Irish centurions, Staunton, Kevin Kilbane, Shay Given, Damien Duff and Robbie Keane, and with seven others who captained teams in the Premier League.
Duff won two Premier League titles, Steve Finnan won everything at Liverpool, including the Champions League. Ian Harte and Gary Kelly helped Leeds to the Champions League semi-finals.
This was a squad of quality, comparable to those at the finals of 1990 and 1994 under Jack Charlton.
With Keano, at his playing peak, wearing the number six jersey in the trenches, there was sufficient quality for Ireland to give anyone a bloody nose.
Pointedly, even without Keane, the team finished stronger than their opponents in all four games, which indicated that the heat and humidity of Saipan, after all, had been beneficial.
The entire Irish party was in Saipan for just six days. Six days that led to the nation holding its breath, just as they did in the penalty shoot-out in the 1990 World Cup.
Say it ain’t so, Roy, they pleaded? Only, it was.
