Roy is over the top

Days later, as we left Tehran on the back of a 1-0 defeat and a 2-1 aggregate win, I came across the little snippet of information that some players were taking wagers on Keane's non-appearance at the World Cup finals.

They reckoned Japan and Korea were too far away for Mr Perfection. They believed the prospect of six weeks with mere mortals would prove too distasteful for a man who now seeks his only satisfaction within the confines of the game.

Little did they know at the time that they were right. Little did I realise that my friend would place a 100 Euro bet on a Keane nonshow at World Cup 2002 just a day after our chat. He got odds of 10-1 and a handsome cheque. I got a bottle of champagne but no pleasure when he rang to explain why that bubbly landed on a County Meath doorstep.

Keane's absence from the World Cup finals was a shame, no matter how you looked at it. Ireland's best player talked himself off the greatest stage of them all when he launched a tirade of abuse at McCarthy on a Thursday night in Saipan.

I felt sorry for the flawed genius when he went to walk his dog as we tripped the light fantastic in Japan and then South Korea. Until this week that is, when leaks from Keane's forthcoming biography began to appear in the Irish papers, some paid for and some unlicensed. Now I fear for his future on and off the pitch.

It is the combination of vitriol, venom and the sheer vulgarity of Keane's outbursts against friend and foe alike which make me worry for the sanity of a man I once thought I knew well.

Keane has gone over the top in print with an anger which only the likes of Alf-Inge Haaland can understand.

He has also attempted to damage the reputations of great men like McCarthy, Jack Charlton, Niall Quinn and Steve Staunton, who never walked out on their country.

Roy clearly believes he is the victim in all this. Well, I have news for him. Not one person involved with the Irish World Cup squad can corroborate his account of events in that room on that Thursday night in Saipan.

No one else heard McCarthy accuse Keane of feigning injury for the away leg of the Iranian game, the big issue as far as he is concerned.

Quinn and Staunton, both branded cowards by this self-appointed disciple of decency, are ready to go into print to that effect and will do so in the coming weeks, just as they will confirm-that the Irish team did not want Keane back at the World Cup finals, no matter what noises were made publicly.

Keane, once their team-mate, is now a forlorn figure, paddling his own canoe against the weight of football opinion back in his native land.

Yes, he can accuse the FAI of poor preparation and poorer facilities for the national team.

Yes, he can pretend he was more sinned against than sinning in Saipan.

He can moan about cheese sandwiches in Amsterdam and prawn sandwiches at Old Trafford.

He can even, bizarrely, try to justify in his own head why it was right to try and bring an end to Alf-Inge Haaland's professional career.

But only Keane can ever know why he allowed the gift that is his footballing talent to become the wedge between his country and his World Cup ambition.

His book, for all we have seen in this week's revelations, points many fingers but repeatedly fails to explain why he let his country down when it needed him most.

That, as much as the Haaland tackle, will haunt him for the rest of his life.

In the process, he has hung decent people out to dry in his search for justification and they may never forgive him. They may not even pity him any more. I don't, not after this week's revelations.

Finally, I have a message for all Manchester United fans out there, the ones who will bear the brunt of Keane's antics this coming season.

If his passing is as accurate as his memory in the months to come, then Fergie and Co are in for a rough ride as they chase Arsenal in the battle for the Premiership, certainly if Tuesday's extract from Keane's biography, as published in The Times, is anything to go by.

Writing about a flight from Cyprus to Barcelona for the second match of a World Cup qualifying double header against Andorra in March of last year, Keane let fire at the sub-standard travel arrangements.

"Economy class with the big lads - Gary Breen, Derek Dunne, Quinny - squeezed up in small seats while the officials and their wives sat up the front," wrote Keane via Eamon Dunphy, his ghost writer.

There are 26 words in that paragraph and three inaccuracies.

Niall Quinn didn't make the trip to Cyprus or Barcelona, he was injured and replaced by David Connolly and Gary Doherty for the two wins.

There was only economy class on the Cypriot chartered flight to Barcelona so the FAI had no choice as to where the players sat.

The last Derek Dunne to have anything to do with Irish football played for St Patrick's Athletic in the League of Ireland in the 1990s. We can only assume Roy is talking about Richard Dunne of Manchester City in this instance.

Derek Dunne, by the way, last made the headlines in the Irish media when he was gunned down in a drugs battle in Amsterdam a couple of years back.