Eoin O’Callaghan’s new book, ‘Keane: Origins’, delves into the making of a legend. Focusing on the period 1988-1993, it charts the Corkman’s formative football years at home while examining his three-seasons under Brian Clough at Nottingham Forest in great detail. Featuring countless interviews and testimonies from a range of ex-teammates, coaches and those who knew him best, it debunks some long-running myths and details the games, the goals, the cars, the clubs, the music and the mistakes.
In the following extract, Keane has been combining a football FÁS course in Dublin (where he is based Monday-Friday) with League of Ireland First Division opportunities with Cobh Ramblers. He has struggled for consistent international recognition at underage level but in November, 1989, he’s part of Maurice Setters’ youth squad for a European Championship qualifier in Malta.
It proves another embarrassing setback.
VICTORY AT THE Hibernian Ground in Corradino would effectively secure qualification. But what added to an already-special atmosphere was the fact that the Republic of Ireland senior team were also in Malta for a crucial World Cup fixture.
A win for them in Valletta the following afternoon would confirm their place at Italia ’90. This meant that there was a capacity crowd of over 2,000 people watching the youth side, including Jack Charlton and his players. But there was little in the way of stage fright and the kids stuck to the script perfectly by easing to a 3–0 victory.
‘Cork aces pave the way for Irish Youths’ win’ was the headline in the next day’s Cork Examiner as Noel Spillane’s match report detailed how the local ‘double-act’ of Paul McCarthy and Alan O’Sullivan both got on the scoresheet. At full-time, the jubilant players ran to the stands, whipped off their jerseys and threw them at fans.
But Keane cut a desolate figure. And for good reason. Again.
“There were seventeen players that went to Malta but only sixteen were in the match-day squad and Roy was the one left out,” recounts Tommy Dunne, who started the game. “During the warm-up, I remember [Maurice] Setters telling him to go and get the balls behind the goal. Inside he must have been tearing himself apart. Of course you would’ve seen some of it, but he wouldn’t have shown his absolute disappointment. When Setters asked him to do it, he just did it. He was disciplined. To be honest, I would’ve thought that incident and that situation would have made him even more determined and even stronger. You can go either way but he was of the mentality that he was going to play harder and work better. He would’ve knuckled down, trained and played”.
“Of course he might have had it in his mind that he wasn’t getting a chance, but the one thing about Roy was that when he did get his chance he took it. At the time he was playing really well for Cobh. We were training twice a day on the FÁS course and some of us were absolutely shattered by the end of the week. But it looked to me like Roy was getting stronger. He was ready. For a lot of people, when the opportunity arises, it’s about being ready for it. And he was absolutely ready.”
Richie Purdy, who was also in Malta, maintains Keane wasn’t being victimised and that him being left out had more to do with the club he played for.
“It was just ridiculous,” he says, referring to Setters’ ostracising of Keane. “It wasn’t personal, but I think that unless you were in England, you weren’t deemed good enough by Maurice Setters. Myself, Tommy, John Connolly and Roy were the only League of Ireland players in the squad, but a lot of the lads who were in England were still playing youth football. I actually thought we were playing at a higher level, but we hadn’t got Liverpool or Chelsea beside our names, we had Home Farm and Hillcrest and Cobh instead. Roy didn’t react to Setters, but you knew he was sick. I didn’t get a run that day and Roy didn’t even get stripped, so it summed up how much the League of Ireland players were struggling to get a look-in”.
Keane’s snub also ensured that history repeated itself in more ways than one. An interested spectator at the Hibernian Ground that afternoon was Ted Streeter, Brighton’s youth development officer. And just like in Bilbao eighteen months earlier at the Under-16 European Championships, he never got to see Roy Keane involved.
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“I went over with Martin Hinshelwood [then Brighton’s assistant manager] to watch and encourage Paul [McCarthy] and Derek [McGrath]. I’m absolutely certain that had I seen Roy play I would have at least invited him for a trial. He must have shown some talent at that time. But when you think that neither the Under–16s manager or Under–18s manager fancied him or played him, you wonder what’s going on, don’t you? Had I seen him – on either occasion – I’m sure I would have recognised talent. And I’m only sorry that I didn’t get the chance.”
For all his mental maturity, Keane wasn’t above letting his emotions spill over. He had plenty of time to dwell on his latest international humiliation. The unique circumstances of the trip ensured a prolonged stay for the youth squad and when Charlton’s senior team made history by booking their place at a World Cup for the first time, there was an inevitable knees-up afterwards. The drinks flowed, the sing-songs started, but Keane was in no mood to celebrate. Tightly wound for over twenty-four hours, the elastic finally snapped.
“We were all having one or two beers with the senior team,” Purdy recalls. “Roy was pissed off and had had a few drinks. He had a bit of a tongue on him with a few beers, but this was worse because he was pissed off and scooped. Packie [Bonner] was walking past with Mick [McCarthy] and he was always nice and would say hello to us. But Roy slaughtered him. In that Cork accent, he said something like, ‘You’re a shit keeper and only for Gerry Peyton being shit as well, you wouldn’t be playing’. Packie was looking at him because we all had our tracksuits on, but he just laughed it off. That’s what Roy did. He said what he felt. Sometimes I think he should’ve kept it down a bit.”
Dunne describes the experience in Malta as strange: “We won our game easily enough and ended up at this function for the senior players. It didn’t surprise me when Roy was getting stuck in. When we’d have a few drinks he was quite wild. It was no holds barred. He’d get stuck in from all angles. He was fairly opinionated on the game and he was really, really witty – especially with the one-liners”.
On the FÁS course, players would usually finish up training in late afternoon, head for their digs and relax for the night. But on Thursday evenings, some of the group would meet up, sometimes in Palmerstown but usually in Lucan. A few games of snooker, a few pints and then maybe the disco in the Spa Hotel. So when Dunne, Purdy and Keane all returned from Malta on a Thursday, word quickly got around about Keane’s party trick.
“We were all saying, ‘Jesus Christ, Roy – what were you thinking?’” Tony Gorman says.
“But we also thought it was fucking hilarious. We got some laugh out of it. As a senior Irish player you probably wouldn’t even remember some eighteen-year-old. But if he was saying you were shite, you might. Tommy was saying, ‘He can’t even get in the squad of sixteen and he’s slaughtering these boys with fifty and sixty caps and telling them they’re fucking useless.’”
Keane was known for his withering put-downs, particularly of those who weren’t used to being on the receiving end. To his mates, it was funny. To others, less so.
“There was a lad from the league that came in on a Friday with our cheques, a nice man involved with Sligo Rovers called Tommy Mullen,” Gorman says.
“He was always bemoaning Sligo’s hard luck. I was talking to him one day and I said, ‘Well Tommy, no luck last weekend?’ And he says to me, ‘Aye Tony, we were fucking robbed.’ So Roy pipes up and says, ‘Don’t worry, Tommy. If you’ve got insurance, I’m sure it’ll cover you.’ And I remember Tommy going ballistic over this cheeky pup. It was one of the main men from the league who you were supposed to be nice to. But Roy didn’t give a monkey’s.”
“He could be cutting and not very nice,” Larry Mahony, Keane’s coach on the FÁS course, says.
“I had a name for him. I’d say, ‘Here’s Mr Charisma in now.’”
Occasionally on the FÁS course, the general topic of Irish underage football cropped up, usually following a squad announcement. Gorman remembers one lunchtime when Joe McGrath, such a prominent youth coach and influential figure within the FAI, was present and Keane offered his thoughts on some recent selections.
“Roy always fought the case for the Cork lads,” Gorman says.
“He was on about how Damien Martin and Eric Hogan from Rockmount should’ve been in the Ireland squad. He was saying the only reason another player was selected instead of Eric was because they were from Dublin. Now, it was never about Roy. He never said he should be picked. We all probably knew that’s what he was angling at, but he never brought it up. It was other players he was mentioning. I suppose the other boys around the Ireland squad at the time – like Tommy or Richie – would be saying he should be in the team but Roy didn’t bring himself into it.”
“What was really interesting was that Roy and Eric Hogan never spoke. Eric was a good lad and I got to know him well because we went on trial together at Derby County afterwards. But him and Roy fell out and they used to walk to Rockmount games on the opposite sides of the road, purposely ignoring each other. On the pitch there was obviously that professionalism because the team was excellent. But I found it so interesting that Roy didn’t speak to him and here he was in Palmerstown still saying he should be picked for the Ireland team. I think it was Lenny Downey telling us afterwards, ‘He wants Eric in the squad and he doesn’t even speak to him – they can’t stand each other.’
The falling out with Hogan, generously described by Keane in The Second Half as having lasted for a year, was inevitably juvenile. ‘He wouldn’t go training one night because he got a new skateboard,’ Keane told his ghostwriter, Roddy Doyle. ‘I fell out with him. “Stick your fuckin’ skateboard.’”
It didn’t exactly shock the rest of the FÁS group that Keane was voicing his displeasure. His opinion about underage squads wasn’t outlandish and many of the players agreed with him. Still, to outline his concerns so strongly to McGrath seemed unnecessarily risky.
“It’s something I would never have done,” Gorman admits.
“I remember coming down from Donegal and going for Ireland trials and not getting picked and thinking you were as good as those who had made the squad. So you could definitely see where Roy was coming from. But at the end of the day, the city boys – like Roy – played at a higher level than us. Getting picked for Ireland was unbelievable in my eyes and I was just so grateful to get the opportunity. Never in a million years would I question a manager or a coach regarding the merits of why I should get picked or not. I’d be grateful to be there and bust my balls to get in the team.”
“But I don’t think any of us were surprised when these discussions were taking place because what Roy was saying was all true. And he was having the balls to say it at eighteen years of age, basically calling out the international manager for only picking players based on where they were from. When he was talking – and he was always very honest and open – he could have been cutting people in two with his tongue. But he was saying what the rest of us probably wanted to.”
“I liked that about him,” Purdy says. “He didn’t sit on the fence. He didn’t go behind your back and say things. He was very straightforward. If he had an issue with you, he’d say it. He had a great desire to stick up for everyone, especially the Cork lads. But I thought it was a bit anti-Dublin as well. Unless you were an exceptionally talented player from the country, you were just up against it [to get spotted]. He did have a little bit of a chip on his shoulder because he hadn’t been picked a few times.”
Keane was forthright, opinionated and prickly but, according to Mahony, never driven by ego.
“It wouldn’t have been the macro picture that Roy was thinking about,” he says.
“He would’ve been thinking about himself. ‘I’m not getting a chance.’ But I would never have thought of him as arrogant. It would be more like a display of strength around other people. And it all went into the mix so he could be this guy who could step up and not be fazed. Confident and single-minded. I admire him because he’s a no-bullshit type of fella. He was able to see through it. He didn’t buy into all this stupidity that goes around the game and was clear-headed enough like that. But I don’t see him as being this complex individual. I see him as being very clear-minded and simple in his approach. What suits Roy Keane, what doesn’t suit Roy Keane. That’s the impression I had of him. Steely in his determination to succeed. I don’t see where the complexity is. I don’t see Roy being a deep type of fella.”
Keane wasn’t on the FÁS course to make friends. He was there to work. It was a means to an end. Something to prepare him for when the opportunity finally presented itself.
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A young Roy Keane 'slaughtering' Packie and dealing with another Setters setback
Eoin O’Callaghan’s new book, ‘Keane: Origins’, delves into the making of a legend. Focusing on the period 1988-1993, it charts the Corkman’s formative football years at home while examining his three-seasons under Brian Clough at Nottingham Forest in great detail. Featuring countless interviews and testimonies from a range of ex-teammates, coaches and those who knew him best, it debunks some long-running myths and details the games, the goals, the cars, the clubs, the music and the mistakes.
In the following extract, Keane has been combining a football FÁS course in Dublin (where he is based Monday-Friday) with League of Ireland First Division opportunities with Cobh Ramblers. He has struggled for consistent international recognition at underage level but in November, 1989, he’s part of Maurice Setters’ youth squad for a European Championship qualifier in Malta.
It proves another embarrassing setback.
VICTORY AT THE Hibernian Ground in Corradino would effectively secure qualification. But what added to an already-special atmosphere was the fact that the Republic of Ireland senior team were also in Malta for a crucial World Cup fixture.
A win for them in Valletta the following afternoon would confirm their place at Italia ’90. This meant that there was a capacity crowd of over 2,000 people watching the youth side, including Jack Charlton and his players. But there was little in the way of stage fright and the kids stuck to the script perfectly by easing to a 3–0 victory.
‘Cork aces pave the way for Irish Youths’ win’ was the headline in the next day’s Cork Examiner as Noel Spillane’s match report detailed how the local ‘double-act’ of Paul McCarthy and Alan O’Sullivan both got on the scoresheet. At full-time, the jubilant players ran to the stands, whipped off their jerseys and threw them at fans.
But Keane cut a desolate figure. And for good reason. Again.
“There were seventeen players that went to Malta but only sixteen were in the match-day squad and Roy was the one left out,” recounts Tommy Dunne, who started the game. “During the warm-up, I remember [Maurice] Setters telling him to go and get the balls behind the goal. Inside he must have been tearing himself apart. Of course you would’ve seen some of it, but he wouldn’t have shown his absolute disappointment. When Setters asked him to do it, he just did it. He was disciplined. To be honest, I would’ve thought that incident and that situation would have made him even more determined and even stronger. You can go either way but he was of the mentality that he was going to play harder and work better. He would’ve knuckled down, trained and played”.
“Of course he might have had it in his mind that he wasn’t getting a chance, but the one thing about Roy was that when he did get his chance he took it. At the time he was playing really well for Cobh. We were training twice a day on the FÁS course and some of us were absolutely shattered by the end of the week. But it looked to me like Roy was getting stronger. He was ready. For a lot of people, when the opportunity arises, it’s about being ready for it. And he was absolutely ready.”
Richie Purdy, who was also in Malta, maintains Keane wasn’t being victimised and that him being left out had more to do with the club he played for.
“It was just ridiculous,” he says, referring to Setters’ ostracising of Keane. “It wasn’t personal, but I think that unless you were in England, you weren’t deemed good enough by Maurice Setters. Myself, Tommy, John Connolly and Roy were the only League of Ireland players in the squad, but a lot of the lads who were in England were still playing youth football. I actually thought we were playing at a higher level, but we hadn’t got Liverpool or Chelsea beside our names, we had Home Farm and Hillcrest and Cobh instead. Roy didn’t react to Setters, but you knew he was sick. I didn’t get a run that day and Roy didn’t even get stripped, so it summed up how much the League of Ireland players were struggling to get a look-in”.
Keane’s snub also ensured that history repeated itself in more ways than one. An interested spectator at the Hibernian Ground that afternoon was Ted Streeter, Brighton’s youth development officer. And just like in Bilbao eighteen months earlier at the Under-16 European Championships, he never got to see Roy Keane involved.
“I went over with Martin Hinshelwood [then Brighton’s assistant manager] to watch and encourage Paul [McCarthy] and Derek [McGrath]. I’m absolutely certain that had I seen Roy play I would have at least invited him for a trial. He must have shown some talent at that time. But when you think that neither the Under–16s manager or Under–18s manager fancied him or played him, you wonder what’s going on, don’t you? Had I seen him – on either occasion – I’m sure I would have recognised talent. And I’m only sorry that I didn’t get the chance.”
For all his mental maturity, Keane wasn’t above letting his emotions spill over. He had plenty of time to dwell on his latest international humiliation. The unique circumstances of the trip ensured a prolonged stay for the youth squad and when Charlton’s senior team made history by booking their place at a World Cup for the first time, there was an inevitable knees-up afterwards. The drinks flowed, the sing-songs started, but Keane was in no mood to celebrate. Tightly wound for over twenty-four hours, the elastic finally snapped.
“We were all having one or two beers with the senior team,” Purdy recalls. “Roy was pissed off and had had a few drinks. He had a bit of a tongue on him with a few beers, but this was worse because he was pissed off and scooped. Packie [Bonner] was walking past with Mick [McCarthy] and he was always nice and would say hello to us. But Roy slaughtered him. In that Cork accent, he said something like, ‘You’re a shit keeper and only for Gerry Peyton being shit as well, you wouldn’t be playing’. Packie was looking at him because we all had our tracksuits on, but he just laughed it off. That’s what Roy did. He said what he felt. Sometimes I think he should’ve kept it down a bit.”
Dunne describes the experience in Malta as strange: “We won our game easily enough and ended up at this function for the senior players. It didn’t surprise me when Roy was getting stuck in. When we’d have a few drinks he was quite wild. It was no holds barred. He’d get stuck in from all angles. He was fairly opinionated on the game and he was really, really witty – especially with the one-liners”.
On the FÁS course, players would usually finish up training in late afternoon, head for their digs and relax for the night. But on Thursday evenings, some of the group would meet up, sometimes in Palmerstown but usually in Lucan. A few games of snooker, a few pints and then maybe the disco in the Spa Hotel. So when Dunne, Purdy and Keane all returned from Malta on a Thursday, word quickly got around about Keane’s party trick.
“We were all saying, ‘Jesus Christ, Roy – what were you thinking?’” Tony Gorman says.
“But we also thought it was fucking hilarious. We got some laugh out of it. As a senior Irish player you probably wouldn’t even remember some eighteen-year-old. But if he was saying you were shite, you might. Tommy was saying, ‘He can’t even get in the squad of sixteen and he’s slaughtering these boys with fifty and sixty caps and telling them they’re fucking useless.’”
Keane was known for his withering put-downs, particularly of those who weren’t used to being on the receiving end. To his mates, it was funny. To others, less so.
“There was a lad from the league that came in on a Friday with our cheques, a nice man involved with Sligo Rovers called Tommy Mullen,” Gorman says.
“He was always bemoaning Sligo’s hard luck. I was talking to him one day and I said, ‘Well Tommy, no luck last weekend?’ And he says to me, ‘Aye Tony, we were fucking robbed.’ So Roy pipes up and says, ‘Don’t worry, Tommy. If you’ve got insurance, I’m sure it’ll cover you.’ And I remember Tommy going ballistic over this cheeky pup. It was one of the main men from the league who you were supposed to be nice to. But Roy didn’t give a monkey’s.”
“He could be cutting and not very nice,” Larry Mahony, Keane’s coach on the FÁS course, says.
Occasionally on the FÁS course, the general topic of Irish underage football cropped up, usually following a squad announcement. Gorman remembers one lunchtime when Joe McGrath, such a prominent youth coach and influential figure within the FAI, was present and Keane offered his thoughts on some recent selections.
“Roy always fought the case for the Cork lads,” Gorman says.
“He was on about how Damien Martin and Eric Hogan from Rockmount should’ve been in the Ireland squad. He was saying the only reason another player was selected instead of Eric was because they were from Dublin. Now, it was never about Roy. He never said he should be picked. We all probably knew that’s what he was angling at, but he never brought it up. It was other players he was mentioning. I suppose the other boys around the Ireland squad at the time – like Tommy or Richie – would be saying he should be in the team but Roy didn’t bring himself into it.”
“What was really interesting was that Roy and Eric Hogan never spoke. Eric was a good lad and I got to know him well because we went on trial together at Derby County afterwards. But him and Roy fell out and they used to walk to Rockmount games on the opposite sides of the road, purposely ignoring each other. On the pitch there was obviously that professionalism because the team was excellent. But I found it so interesting that Roy didn’t speak to him and here he was in Palmerstown still saying he should be picked for the Ireland team. I think it was Lenny Downey telling us afterwards, ‘He wants Eric in the squad and he doesn’t even speak to him – they can’t stand each other.’
The falling out with Hogan, generously described by Keane in The Second Half as having lasted for a year, was inevitably juvenile. ‘He wouldn’t go training one night because he got a new skateboard,’ Keane told his ghostwriter, Roddy Doyle. ‘I fell out with him. “Stick your fuckin’ skateboard.’”
It didn’t exactly shock the rest of the FÁS group that Keane was voicing his displeasure. His opinion about underage squads wasn’t outlandish and many of the players agreed with him. Still, to outline his concerns so strongly to McGrath seemed unnecessarily risky.
“It’s something I would never have done,” Gorman admits.
“I remember coming down from Donegal and going for Ireland trials and not getting picked and thinking you were as good as those who had made the squad. So you could definitely see where Roy was coming from. But at the end of the day, the city boys – like Roy – played at a higher level than us. Getting picked for Ireland was unbelievable in my eyes and I was just so grateful to get the opportunity. Never in a million years would I question a manager or a coach regarding the merits of why I should get picked or not. I’d be grateful to be there and bust my balls to get in the team.”
“But I don’t think any of us were surprised when these discussions were taking place because what Roy was saying was all true. And he was having the balls to say it at eighteen years of age, basically calling out the international manager for only picking players based on where they were from. When he was talking – and he was always very honest and open – he could have been cutting people in two with his tongue. But he was saying what the rest of us probably wanted to.”
“I liked that about him,” Purdy says. “He didn’t sit on the fence. He didn’t go behind your back and say things. He was very straightforward. If he had an issue with you, he’d say it. He had a great desire to stick up for everyone, especially the Cork lads. But I thought it was a bit anti-Dublin as well. Unless you were an exceptionally talented player from the country, you were just up against it [to get spotted]. He did have a little bit of a chip on his shoulder because he hadn’t been picked a few times.”
Keane was forthright, opinionated and prickly but, according to Mahony, never driven by ego.
“It wouldn’t have been the macro picture that Roy was thinking about,” he says.
“He would’ve been thinking about himself. ‘I’m not getting a chance.’ But I would never have thought of him as arrogant. It would be more like a display of strength around other people. And it all went into the mix so he could be this guy who could step up and not be fazed. Confident and single-minded. I admire him because he’s a no-bullshit type of fella. He was able to see through it. He didn’t buy into all this stupidity that goes around the game and was clear-headed enough like that. But I don’t see him as being this complex individual. I see him as being very clear-minded and simple in his approach. What suits Roy Keane, what doesn’t suit Roy Keane. That’s the impression I had of him. Steely in his determination to succeed. I don’t see where the complexity is. I don’t see Roy being a deep type of fella.”
Keane wasn’t on the FÁS course to make friends. He was there to work. It was a means to an end. Something to prepare him for when the opportunity finally presented itself.
And he didn’t have long to wait.
Keane: Origins, published by Mercier Press, is out now.
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